You don’t have to watch any awards show for long to recognize two things: first, people like being appreciated, second people need an opportunity to thank people who have helped them succeed.

When working with volunteers we need to create these opportunities. We need to create opportunities to thank our volunteers and we need to give our volunteers opportunities to thank others who have helped them.

The first is obvious, something we think about and probably do quite often (hopefully). If you’re not in the practice, it would be a good practice for you to get into. That practice is, regularly thanking your volunteers. Say thanks after a worship service. Say thanks after a rehearsal. When someone tells you they spend time working on their parts during the week, say thanks. Send thank-you notes as often as you can. Take every opportunity to pat your volunteers on the back.

We should also create specific opportunities to thank volunteers. I’ve done something that I call the WAMMIES (Worship Arts Ministry Most influential and exceptional service) awards. I went with that because it’s a play on Grammy’s (just in case that wasn’t obvious to you;) and because it’s kind of corny and funny. It was an event, obviously not at the same caliber as the Grammy’s or the Oscar’s, but it was a classy event in its own right. We brought in a chef to cook the food, we hired waiters and waitresses to wait on the tables. I bought personalized awards to hand out. It was a great night. And not only did it give me an opportunity to say thanks it did something else. That leads me to the second point.

We need to give people an opportunity to thank others. It’s a great example for us to be thankful to others. But we can’t stop there. Some of us hesitate to let people talk and say things impromptu, and sometimes it backfires on you. But, a lot of the time you can accomplish things while others are talking that are hard for you to accomplish on your own. When you give people the opportunity to say thanks they will inevitably reinforce your values as a worship arts ministry or whatever your volunteer organization. They can do in a quick “thank-you” speech, what you wouldn’t be able to accomplish in a 30 minute lecture on your values.

Remember this, What’s rewarded get’s repeated. John Maxwell says, if you reward your eager beavers the same as you do your goof offs, you will soon find yourself with more goof offs than eager beavers. Take time to reward the people who are doing what you want them to do and people will notice. Whatever you do, don’t reward the goof offs. This sounds like common sense, but it can be harder to do than you think. The reason is that goof offs often come in the class-clown format, and a lot of people like the class-clown. But if you have a class-clown in your ministry, who just comes and wings it, at the same time having people who have put in their time to be prepared, you must resist the urge to give in to the class clown. Pat the eager beaver on the back, not the goof off.

When you see awards ceremonies, let it be a reminder to you that we need to be thanking our volunteers. We are dependent on them, we fail without them.

Here was our set this weekend:

• Sing, Sing, Sing (Tomlin -did it in the original key, had an alto sing melody on the chorus and I sang melody on the verses.)
• Let the Praises Ring
• Hosanna
• Welcome
• Cannons
• Christ is Risen
• Sermon
• Here I am to Worship
• May the World See Your Light In Me (Brian Cheney)

Brian was a roommate of mine in college, and he also played in a group with Kevin for a while. We did this song in choir back in the day, and it just happen to fit perfectly with the sermon this weekend, so we did it.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday setlists on The Worship Community.

We’re going to be going through the book God Songs by Paul Baloche & Jimmy & Carol Owens. (If you click on the title, it will take you directly to the store on Paul’s site where you can buy your own copy of the book.) By the way, if you haven’t checked out Paul’s Site: leadworship.com, you should do that. There are tons of great resources there for your worship team.

If you’re a faithful listening to the worship ministry catalyst podcast, we would love to hear from you and we’d also love it if you’d take the time to share us with your friends and other worship leaders you know.

Whether you’re new or have been listening for quite some time, we would love to hear form you, as well as we would really appreciate some good feedback on iTunes, if you don’t mind taking a minute to do so that would be awesome!

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

Here was our Set:

• O Praise Him
• Famous One
• Prayer
• From the Inside Out
• Sermon Intro
• All Who Are Thirsty
• Nothing But the Blood (Redman)
• Sermon
• Once Again

For more weekend Reviews, Check out Sunday Setlists over at The Worship Community.

We’re going to be going through the book God Songs by Paul Baloche & Jimmy & Carol Owens. (If you click on the title, it will take you directly to the store on Paul’s site where you can buy your own copy of the book.) By the way, if you haven’t checked out Paul’s Site: leadworship.com, you should do that. There are tons of great resources there for your worship team.

If you’re a faithful listening to the worship ministry catalyst podcast, we would love to hear from you and we’d also love it if you’d take the time to share us with your friends and other worship leaders you know.

Whether you’re new or have been listening for quite some time, we would love to hear form you, as well as we would really appreciate some good feedback on iTunes, if you don’t mind taking a minute to do so that would be awesome!

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

We also had a smaller band this week, on purpose. It’s a group I’m working on taking in a different direction than our other groups. I’m wanting it to be a piano driven group with a jazz &/or Gospel feel to it. It’s a new venture for us, but I’m excited about it. If you have any experience with this and you would like to offer me some pointers, that would be awesome, I could use the help!

Here was our Set:

• I am Free
• Give My Praise (Mine)
• Welcome
• Your Name
• Revelation Song
• Total Praise
• Sermon
• Lord, Reign in Me.

It was great to have the choir join us, the band was fun. Just an overall great weekend! For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists on The Worship Community.

Since it was pretty simple, I picked some songs that I thought would work well on just keys. That included a few hymns, it actually ended up being liked by a lot of people & it’s nice to score points with people who like Hymns. (I happen to be one of those people).

Here was our set:

• Holy, Holy, Holy (SCC arr.)
• Blessed Assurance (My Arr.)
• My Savior My God (My Arr.)
• Amazing Grace (My chains are gone) – added a cello patch from the motif xs8 in on just the bass notes, cut it of on the C below middle C.
• Communion
• Love like Rain (Daniel Doss) – Kept the same cello patch for the bass & added in the “almighty” string patch in the upper register. With the piano, it made a really nice, full sound.
• Sermon
• I’ll go where you want me to God (My arr.)

For communion, we brought out some of the art work that some of the artists in our church have painted over the year to give people something visual to meditate. We also used photos from our photographic team as the backgrounds for the lyrics this weekend. It ended up being a cool, artsy kind of a weekend.

That’s about it, not a bunch more to talk about. For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists on the Worship Community.

There’s a section with lessons, videos showing how to play some bass licks, and other great resources. You should definitely go check it out.

These are a couple of links to some ear training articles they have posted on their blog, Echoes. These articles were actually written by Evan Kepner who runs No Treble, which is a cool site for bass players.

• The Zen of Ear Training – Part 1
• The Zen of Ear Training – Part 2

More and more worship leaders I know are getting into recording. Even if it’s just for recording practice cd’s or rough arrangements, or rough ideas of new songs, home/office recording is growing hugely. And while we can say that we just want to rough out an idea for a song, the perectionist in us still wants to do that perfect recording.

Well, here’s a resource that might help you achieve some better results. Des McKinney runs the blog, Home Tracked, and he  obviously knows what he’s talking about. He offers cheap solutions for some of the most common issues we face in recording at home, like a portable vocal booth and a list of free vocal plugins. It’s definitely worth your time.

I’d recommend you check out the following links:

• Free Vocal Plugins
• Tips for more Professional recordings
• Portable Vocal Booth

Here was our Set:

• Let God Arise
• Because of Your Love
• Song of Hope
• Reading – Psalm 103
• Let the Praises Ring
• Everlasting God
• Sermon
• Wherever He Leads I’ll go (Old hymn, my music) – You can listen to a recording in the player to the right.

To see what other worship pastors and churches did, check out Sunday setlists on The Worship Community.

This topic among discussions of creativity is probably one of the most important and yet, one of the most overlooked.

1.) Stop saying no to ideas that don’t fit your paradigm. How many times have you shot down and idea instinctively or had one of your ideas shot down in the same manner? This is one of the biggest road blocks to creativity.

You’ve probably heard this before, but it’s worth repeating: If you keep doing what you’ve done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. If you want the best ideas to rise to the top, you have to allow all ideas to rise, not shut them down.

2.) Get out there and see ideas of what others are doing (especially people/churches who do things you don’t normally do. We need to be good at finding resources, ideas that other people have tried and succeeded at doing. We need to be good at sifting through lots of information, looking at a lot of manuscripts until we find the cream of the crop. It’s kind of like a thankless version of American Idol. We go through a lot of auditions to find the one star, the one that stands well above the rest, the one that will speak to the most people. Use your feed readers like google, or even subscribe to blogs like this one in your email program. Get used to sifting through lots of material until you find the one gem.

3.) Take a semi-calculated risk. Some of us think we take “calculated” risks, but in reality we don’t. We calculate them so much that any real risk has been removed from the equation. I know the arguments, there’s too much on the line, we might lose people, we might make people mad, people might stop giving their money and we won’t have a job, etc. In all likelihood the only reason any of us are in the positions that we are is because someone, somewhere along the way took a risk and it paid off.

We have to take some risks. The bigger our organizations get, the harder risks become to take and the more comfortable we get with the way things are. We stand to lose too much, so we keep things the way we are, we make the same decisions.

Take a risk, do something that hasn’t been done before. Think it through, but don’t kill it just because you’ve never done it before.

In order to be creative, we have to remove the filter through which we evaluate ideas. We can’t judge an idea based on what we think we know. We have to learn from other’s mistaks. We have to take risks.

Kevin& his wife had a baby a little over a week ago. Congratulations Kevin! That said, we haven’t been able to record any new episodes of the podcast in the last week or two, however, it will be coming up soon. I’m working on nailing down a couple of phone interviews to put up in the next couple of episodes of the podcast.

Are you interested in being on the podcast? Do you skype? Get in touch!

Because of this we get to do a little bit tougher music & we get to polish it a little more. This weekend was no exception. Last night had a few rough spots, which can be largely attributed to my having to cancel our midweek rehearsal, but this morning was great!

Here was our set:

• Sing, Sing, Sing. (Tomlin)
• Welcome
• Happy Day (Fee Arr.)
• Let the Praises Ring (Brewster)
• Scripture
• One God (Jeremy Ross)
• From the Inside Out
• Message
• The Church’s One Foundation

“Sing, sing, sing” is the first song from Tomlin’s new album that we’ve done at our church. People liked it. For me, it’s okay, it sounds like all his other stuff, but people like it. This was also the first time we did “Let the Praises Ring” and I think in general people liked that one too. The best response was on “Happy Day” & “From the Inside Out”. “Happy Day” because people knew that one pretty well and “From the inside Out” because people really connect with that one.

All that good stuff said, we did have our fair share of troubles yesterday. One of the biggest troubles we had is with our bass player following along. He’s more of a technical player than a feel player if you know what I mean. He’s got good feel, but he definitely lands on the technical side of things. When using a chord chart he seems to have problems with repeats and what not. Aside from writing out music for him, I’m not sure how to help him out more. He works the music up on his own, probably more than most of the others on the team, except our guitarist, but for some reason, little changes seem to throw him for a loop.

Any of you have ideas on things I could do to help?

For more Weekend Reviews, Check out Sunday Setlists @ The Worship Community.

As we’ve been going through the book “God songs” by Jimmy & Carol Owens & Paul Baloche on our podcast, this resource is extremely useful. There are a ton of great resources on the site, like songwriting tools links; songwriting resources; artist resources; etc.

By far, the thing I am loving the best is the forum. They have a very extensive forum for songwriters which includes a tiered critique. (Even at the highest level of critique they are extremely friendly in their feedback.) They also have many other things to discuss in the forum, it’s very extensive.

I’d strongly recommend you head over there and check it out, get a membership and start sharing your input on the forum. Tell them we sent you!

It’s a very tight rail we walk in terms of volume. Some churches have a harder time than others. Some churches have problems caused by the building they are in, others have problems because of the large age range they serve on a weekly basis. Still others have problems because musicians like it loud, and the guitarist’s amp just doesn’t sound as warm unless it’s turned up. It’s a battle I’ve been a part of pretty much my whole life.

I’ve learned a lot over the course of my time in worship ministry about sound pressure levels, decibels and what not (to be quite honest, far more than I ever wanted to know). Today I thought I’d share a resource with you that I came across as this battle was thrust into the forefront of my mind once again. It’s called “Dangerous Decibels.” Here’s the link: http://www.dangerousdecibels.org/hearingloss.cfm

This link is particularly helpful as it has a chart on this page about hearing damage. Not that we need to be able to win our side of the argument, but this is an issue we need to have thought through clearly. As churches, we cannot be responsible for people losing their hearing. At the same time, contemporary worship music is loud. So, I’d recommend you take a minute or two and familiarize yourself with the info on Dangerous Decibels so that you can be leading your people in this way.

So, we did some Tommy Walker songs which are great for piano, we did a song I wrote and since I’m a piano guy, it’s a piano song. We did a couple of other songs that are normal contemporary songs too.

Here was our set:

• Never Gonna Stop (Walker)
• No Greater Love (Walker)
• Scripture
• I am Crowned (Lindner)
• How Deep the Father’s Love for us.
• Message
• Amazing Love (I’ll never be the same – Hohnholtz)
• Awesome is the Lord (Tomlin)

We used a click on three of the songs this weekend. The click beat us on Saturday evening, but we played with it well this morning. We even got the transition from “Never Gonna Stop” which we were doing at 92 bpm into “No Greater Love” which we did at 107 bpm.

Do you know any good piano driven worship bands or songs? Indie groups would be great too. As much as I love the Tommy Walker stuff, I’d much rather be moving our piano sounding group more in the direction of a “Keane,” “The Fray” or “Coldplay” kind of a sound.

For more weekend reviews check out Sunday Setlists over at “The Worship Community.”

On another note, Kevin (the other guy behind Worship Ministry Catalyst) would appreciate your prayers this week as his wife is scheduled to deliver their baby on Monday or Tuesday.

RESOUNDworship.org is a group of British based worship songwriters, seeking to resource the church with heartfelt, crafted, accessible worship songs.

It’s a really great resource, definitely worth your time checking out. They have a lot of songs they have written and they are all available for your use.

They also have a very thorough writing process that’s worth noting. You can see that here.

We’re going to be going through the book God Songs by Paul Baloche & Jimmy & Carol Owens. (If you click on the title, it will take you directly to the store on Paul’s site where you can buy your own copy of the book.) By the way, if you haven’t checked out Paul’s Site: leadworship.com, you should do that. There are tons of great resources there for your worship team.

If you’re a faithful listening to the worship ministry catalyst podcast, we would love to hear from you and we’d also love it if you’d take the time to share us with your friends and other worship leaders you know.

Whether you’re new or have been listening for quite some time, we would love to hear form you, as well as we would really appreciate some good feedback on iTunes, if you don’t mind taking a minute to do so that would be awesome!

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

Show Notes:

The Gift of Christmas – Click here to download .pdf of the choral Arr. (This songs is protected & is the property of David Lindner Music – please let me know if you wish to use this for your church.

However, what they two guys were doing sounded really good in my monitors, so aside from that one thing, it was a great weekend.

Here was our set:

• Call to Worship: Read William Temple’s Definition of Worship. “Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose–all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.”
• How Can I Keep From Singing?
• Glorious (Baloche CD arr.)
• Beautiful One (By the Tree arr.)
• Just to be with You (Baloche CD arr.)
• Holy is the Lord.
• Sermon
• Tell the World (Hillsong)

Aside from our sound issues, it was a great weekend. What was your weekend like? Check out what other worship leaders did this weekend over on The Worship Community.

We’re going to be going through the book God Songs by Paul Baloche & Jimmy & Carol Owens. (If you click on the title, it will take you directly to the store on Paul’s site where you can buy your own copy of the book.) By the way, if you haven’t checked out Paul’s Site: leadworship.com, you should do that. There are tons of great resources there for your worship team.

If you’re a faithful listening to the worship ministry catalyst podcast, we would love to hear from you and we’d also love it if you’d take the time to share us with your friends and other worship leaders you know.

Whether you’re new or have been listening for quite some time, we would love to hear form you, as well as we would really appreciate some good feedback on iTunes, if you don’t mind taking a minute to do so that would be awesome!

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

Show Notes:

The Gift of Christmas – Click here to download .pdf of the choral Arr. (This songs is protected & is the property of David Lindner Music – please let me know if you wish to use this for your church.

If you’re a songwriter, or you just want to know more about the process of writing a song, check out the podcast!

Here was our set:

• Love the Lord (Brewster)
• You are Holy (Prince of Peace)
• Scripture Reading (Eph. 2:11-22)
• Here Am I (Mike Honholtz)
• Still (Hillsongs)
• Sermon
• Rest In Your Peace (Mine)

It was fun to do a couple of these songs from a few years ago. Isn’t it amazing how quickly songs seem old now? It used to be that songs would last for decades, now they last a year. The really good ones still last.

For more weekend Reviews – Check out Sunday Setlists over on The Worship Community.

We’re going to be going through the book God Songs by Paul Baloche & Jimmy & Carol Owens. (If you click on the title, it will take you directly to the store on Paul’s site where you can buy your own copy of the book.) By the way, if you haven’t checked out Paul’s Site: leadworship.com, you should do that. There are tons of great resources there for your worship team.

If you’re a faithful listening to the worship ministry catalyst podcast, we would love to hear from you and we’d also love it if you’d take the time to share us with your friends and other worship leaders you know.

Whether you’re new or have been listening for quite some time, we would love to hear form you, as well as we would really appreciate some good feedback on iTunes, if you don’t mind taking a minute to do so that would be awesome!

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

We focused our worship time around what might be my goal for our congregation this year, to take advantage of every opportunity we are given to worship. That we will rejoice daily in our savior, that we will boast in him, that we wouldn’t be lazy or selfish

I had the privilege of doing communion this morning, which I’ve only done one other time since I’ve been here. I botched it up last night, but I think I did a much better job this morning. I talked about Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding, and contrasted that with the cup of the new covenant between Jesus our Groom and the church His bride.

Here was our set:

• Today is the Day
• I Will Boast
• Cannons (Phil Wickham)
• Communion
• Pardoning Blood (Mine)
• Sermon
• I am In You (Mine)

This last song is one that I wrote a few years ago for a sermon our pastor did at our last church from the book of Colossians. It turned out to be a perfect fit for this sermon in the book of Ephesians. This is the first time in my life I’ve done more than one of my own songs in a worship service. Felt kind of weird, almost like I was trying to get attention. It just worked out that the two songs we did worked really well. Oh well.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday setlists over at Fred’s Place.

This weekend is one of the first times I feel like we didn’t drop the ball the weekend after Christmas. It seems like every year after Christmas and Easter, we’re always scrambling to get a band together and to get the music worked out, etc., but I didn’t feel like that was the case this year. We had a full band, with not missing components, we had solid vocals and we were able to get the arrangements worked out. Last night had a few wrinkles, but today was pretty good.

Here was our set:

• Angels from the realms of Glory (SCC Arr.)
• It Came Upon a Midnight Clear (SCC Arr.)
• Prayer for our worship in the new year
• Light of the World (Nockels)
• Glory In The Highest (Tomlin)
• Sermon on Contentment
• Living for Jesus (Hymn with new music)

Our transitions weren’t exactly smooth, though they were better for this morning’s service. Other than that, things went pretty well. For more weekend reviews check out Sunday Setlists @ Fred’s Place.

This weekend, our pastor was talking about the Holy Spirit, which is something we almost never talk about. And since we never talk about it, we also haven’t really introduced any songs in the past that are related to the Holy Spirit. So, unfortunately for some of the members of our band, we did 3 hymns that all talk about the spirit somewhere in the song.

Here was our Set:

• Hallelujah (Your love is amazing)
• A Mighty Fortress (My Arr.)
• Glorious (Baloche)
• Welcome
• Eph. 1:11-14
• Be Thou My Vision (My Arr. – with a bridge I wrote – Recording in the side bar to the right.)
• Hungry
• Sermon
• Holy, Holy, Holy (SCC arr.)

We’re still in our BE series, but we kind of finished up a mini-series within the series on the trinity, so I thought it would be fitting to close the service by singing about the entire trinity, for which Holy, Holy, Holy was the perfict fit.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Set-lists @ Fred’s place.

A few years back, (more than a few – but I’m not willing to admit that yet) I was a student at a college in the midwest, where we had this group that I sang in called the University Chorale. It was a great experience, one that I remember fondly to this day. Singing in that choir gave me some of my best musical experiences, it also gave me some friendships that continue to this day. Trevor of the Lift Worship Band was in that chorale at the same time as me. We got to know each other a little, but unfortunately not as much as I would have liked.

Regardless of all that, I’m pleased to announce to you the release of self-entitled Debut album by The LiFT Worship Band. I have listened to every song on this album, and I have no reservations in recommending this to you as a resource for your worship ministry. Even more than that, I would highly recommend this album for your student ministry. And even more than that, I would suggest you get in touch with the LiFT worship band and start talking to them about coming to your church to lead your church or your student ministry in a time of worship. Buy the album, teach the songs to your people, then have them come for a worship experience I’m sure you’ll not forget for some time.

You can head over to their website to listen to recordings of all the songs, you can download .pdfs of the songs to use them in your church.

I asked Trevor to tell the stories behind the songs on the ablum. I’d strongly recommend you read these stories. As you do, I think you’ll notice the same thing that I did, authenticity. The stories behind the songs are real, they are authentic. This authenticity carries over to the album, as you’ll hear when you buy the album and listen to the songs over and over.

Head on over to their website and check them out!  http://www.liftworshipband.com

Here are the Stories:
Lift Worship Band is:
Tony Cipriano (Electric Guitar)
Matt Mackiewicz (Bass)
Gary Bianchi (Drums)
Brandon Gollwitzer (Electric Guitar)
Trevor Kaufman (Vocals, Acoustic Guitar)

Upside Down: The song started with Tony Cipriano bringing the intro riff to rehearsal and we jammed on it for a while. That rehearsal generated a lot of ideas, and Brandon Gollwitzer added the bridge and verse sections while working on an arrangement for the different parts. Gary Bianchi plays the most insane and incredible drum patterns that absolutely take it to another level musically and create a huge energy during the song. Musically it came together in a few rehearsals, and I finished it off with lyrics that would support the theme of our student ministry for the year. This year’s theme is “Flip” and the concept is flipping our mindset of the world upside down and wholeheartedly following Christ. The theme is kept a secret and finally unveiled at our Fall Retreat. It is our largest annual event and kicks off the whole student ministry year. This was the event where we officially released the CD. The students are loving it so far.

Mercy: Brandon Gollwitzer wrote all the music for this song, and then he and I collaborated on the lyrics. This song is a response to the call of Micah 6:8; to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly. It is about the actions that follow the call. This winter we have the privilege to lead worship for Love/Mercy 09 in Baltimore, MD which is the regional Wesleyan Youth Convention for the North-Eastern US, and Micah 6:8 is the theme of that event. We are hoping students at the convention embrace this song as passionately as the students here have done.

Rise Up: The music and lyrics for this song were written by Brandon Gollwitzer. He woke one Saturday morning and the song came pouring out; totally a God thing. The bridge of this song was actually written in the middle of the night in a dark hotel room. It is amazing where and when God speaks. The song is a call from our hearts for God to overwhelm us with his glory, and shine his light out to a broken world. Brandon brought this song to the band, and it came together very fast as God was clearly in every aspect of it. This song proves to be extremely easy to learn during worship services and students and adults seem to really enjoy it.

You Are: I had the privilege of being the one God chose to write this song. This is one of those songs that sort of fell out. I barely even remember writing it. I just sort of happened. I think I came up with a chord progression and the words and melody just fell out. You know a song is straight from God when that happens. This is one of my personal favorite songs as I feel it is very powerful and hits a lot of people right where they are. Brandon Gollwitzer wrote a tag for this song that we do live, but we left it off of the album due to the length. When we do the song live we add the tag, and the extended time of worship allows us to ask God to be lifted high in our lives. My favorite part of this song is the bridge, and how musically it explodes into a solo played by Brandon. It is amazing to hear how the instrumentalists in the band are all clearly worshipping through their instruments. This is one of those divine moments for me on the album.

Lift: This song is the first song we ever wrote as a band. It actually was finalized about 4 years ago at our Fall Retreat. It was the first moment we realized as a band, “Hey we can write music!” I had come up with the music and lyrics for the song, but it really came to life with the band when Brandon wrote the intro guitar riff which instantly became the musical hook for the song. The lyrics were written and inspired by our students. At that time they were not very inspired worshippers. Getting them to clap their hands or show any sort of consciousness was extremely difficult. I wrote this song hoping the students would gain some identity in the original music, and start to be able to express themselves a little more during worship. God worked through it, using that song and some Hillsong United covers, to be the catalyst to bring the students to a place where they are now much more comfortable in a corporate worship environment, and much more expressive. This song, being our first, has been played a lot in our student services and I think they may be getting a little tired of it. So it’s funny that now the rest of the world is hearing it for the very first time now with the release of our album.

Have Your Way: This was the second song we wrote. It is another one that just fell out. I came up with the music and lyrics on this one as well, but it was clearly ALL God. It came way too easy and as I look back at the lyrics, I think to myself, “I could have never come up with that on my own.” The band really brought this song to life. Matt Mackiewicz came up with an incredible, melodic bass lead over the verses that sits well with the counterpoint of Brandon Gollwitzer’s tremolo effected arpeggios. Tony Cipriano plays some phenomenal, bluesy leads in the spaces of the lyrics. It turned out incredible. This is a great song to sing when dealing with surrender and calling out to God to be used by Him.

Break Me: Wow, this song turned into something none of us expected. It was written in England by me and BMX rider from Enemy Opposition, Brandon Rizzo. (Enemy Opposition is a skate park ministry I run out of Buffalo, NY. That’s a whole other story) Brandon and I were up on a hill in the countryside of England, just outside Stratford-upon-Avon, sitting under a wooden cross. The mental picture is almost too perfect. We were playing through chord progressions and reading the Psalms. We landed on Psalm 88, which is where this song came from. We came up with this pretty quick as God was clearly with us. That was about 2 years ago, and it pretty much sat in the “vault” until we started recording the album. The band thought it would be great to have an acoustic song on the album, maybe even to end with.. So that’s what it started out as. Then we decided to add some ambient guitar sounds, which is Brandon Gollwitzer using a variety of delays and the occasional e-bow. Matt Mackiewicz added some harmonics on bass, and the song really came alive when we brought in cellist Dave Meyer as a guest musician. I’m so excited how God brought this song to where it is now. Since the release of the album this song has been used many times for “alter call” moments. It is really incredible to think of how many lives have been changed for eternity with this song playing in the back of their minds.

Carry Me: This song has turned out to be one of the most powerful songs on the album. It was written, music and lyrics, by Brandon Gollwitzer, and is based on the lonely moment of clarity when we each recognize our inability to meet our deepest needs and call out to God. With the simple and intimate image of Jesus carrying us through the most extreme moment of life, this song speaks to the lost and the hurting in an amazing way. At the same time, it reaches out to embrace those who may just be going through smaller issues that feel insurmountable. This song allows the worshipper to find solace in the fact that Christ is there, carrying them through it all, whatever it may be. I love how God brought this song together in the studio to be such an evocative moment.

Stronger: Tony Cipriano wrote the music to this song, which lends itself to an incredible groove. It generated an instant chemistry, and we recorded an instrumental demo to capture the moment. Megan Gollwitzer, Brandon’s wife, heard the demo and was moved to write the chorus. I later added the verses. It came together great and the instrumental sections lead to incredible moments of reflective worship. It is awesome to hear Tony worship through his instrument as he solos over the instrumentals sections. This song praises the amazing dichotomy of how big our God is, and yet how personal and loving He is as well. When we play this song live, we often tag the chorus of Hillsong United’s Mighty to Save onto the end. It creates an intense time of worship.

At Your Hands: Wow this song has some history. Brandon Gollwitzer came to us with this song about 2 years ago while we while we were going through some transitions as a band and it never really took off. It has a subtle 2 beat pickup at the start of each line in the chorus that makes the song both interesting and challenging. At the time, Brandon was the only one that seemed to be able to feel where it was going. All the guys in the band still joke that this is “the toothpick song” because it was so hard to get the feel for it that it had to be written by Rainman (like the movie “Rainman” where a box of toothpicks falls and he instantly counts the number of toothpicks on the floor). I was skeptical on how the song would relate to students, and if it would be too confusing to follow and sing along with. After being sidelined for two years, we revisited it a few months before heading into the studio. It finally clicked with everyone, and just fell into place. God kept this song on Brandon’s heart, and through all of our doubts, He made it successful. Now this song is actually one of the favorite songs of the students. It’s amazing how God works.

Back to Life: The music for this song was written by Matt Mackiewicz. We used it as an instrumental for a while for the theme song at one of our High School programs before adding the lyrics. The words were a collaboration between Matt, Brandon Gollwitzer and myself. They deal with the feelings we encounter in the darkest hours of our life and the desperation that accompanies our sinfulness. The tone of this song does not translate very strongly to corporate worship. So we tend to use this song in performance situations like a special or a walk-in song. As a band we have made a conscious decision to focus on leading worship over performance, so we don’t get to play it too often. However the song rocks pretty hard and is a favorite among several students. This song always brings an awesome energy into the room, and on the album it turned out great.

Well, here we are again. I don’t know if very many of you do a Thanksgiving Eve or Thanksgiving day service, but to me these services seem to just creep up on me every year. In the back of my head, I know they’re coming, but between our regular weekend services and gearing up for Christmas weekend, it seems that they just sort of appear out of no where. I find myself on the Monday before the service wondering exactly how we’re going to do what we’re supposed to do.

So, here it is, the Monday before our Thanksgiving Eve service, and yes, I’m in that same place. Well, not quite to the extent that it has been in the past, I kind of know what we’re doing, speaking in generalities. I just don’t have all the details nailed down, all the personnel lined up and all the media put together.

So, I thought I’d throw it out there to you and see if you have any ideas that you are using this year for your Thanksgiving services that might be different from the usual that you’re willing to share with the rest of the world.

Comment below!

(By the way, the graphic we are using came from Luis Garcia on creativemyk.com)

One of the challenges of having a Saturday evening service and a Sunday morning service, is that there is always the possibility that something will happen to someone between Saturday night & Sunday morning – like getting sick. That’s what happened this weekend, our drummer called on Sunday morning to let me know he wouldn’t be able to make it because he was sick. Fortunately, our children’s director plays drums excellently, and he was able to step in. So, we ended up being covered.

We did Paul Baloche’s new song “Glorious” today. We didn’t use a loop (Someday, I would like to), but I was able to set up a patch on my Yamaha Motif XS8 to sound pretty much like a lot of the stuff they were doing on the recording. It’s a “glorious” song, If you haven’t added it to your repertoire yet, I’d highly recommend you do.

Here was our Set:

• All Because of Jesus (Fee)
• Ephesians 1:7-8
• I Am Free
• Glorious
• Mighty to Save
• Revelation Song
• Sermon
• Your Grace is enough.

I love a lot of these songs: All Because of Jesus, Glorious & Revelation song are among my favorites right now. Our female vocalists were sick this weekend, and were unable to find anyone to fill in for them, so I had to try & do the echo’s on “I am free” by myself. It was interesting, different.

For more weekend reviews/worship confessionals/Sunday Setlists – check out Sunday Setlists over at Fred’s Place.

If you missed last weeks’ podcast, I’d highly recommend you go check it out here. In this week’s episode, David and Kevin continue their discussion on songwriting through the book “God Songs.” I’d strongly recommend you pick up a copy of the book and go through it with us!

We’re going to be going through the book God Songs by Paul Baloche & Jimmy & Carol Owens. (If you click on the title, it will take you directly to the store on Paul’s site where you can buy your own copy of the book.) By the way, if you haven’t checked out Paul’s Site: leadworship.com, you should do that. There are tons of great resources there for your worship team.

If you’re a faithful listening to the worship ministry catalyst podcast, we would love to hear from you and we’d also love it if you’d take the time to share us with your friends and other worship leaders you know.

Whether you’re new or have been listening for quite some time, we would love to hear form you, as well as we would really appreciate some good feedback on iTunes, if you don’t mind taking a minute to do so that would be awesome!

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

The rest of the service was good; but that image of over 40 Veterans standing on stage is still so clear.  We had a smaller band this Sunday, which worked out really well because we’ve been having some monitor issues.  I was happy with how things turned out and got some good feedback after church:

• Prelude: National Anthem (no Honor Guard; hopefully next year)
• Brief message on Freedom (Chris McDaniel)
• Welcome Time
• Mission Focus: Angel Tree Ministry
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• He Reigns (Newsboys)
• Lord Most High (Can’t remember who wrote this)
• All Creatures of Our God and King(David Crowder arrangement)
• Always (United)
• God of Wonders (Marc Byrd / Third Day)
• Message: How Did it All Begin? – Genesis 1-2 (Pastor Mike)
• Postlude: God of Wonders

To see what other Worship Teams are doing on Sunday, check out Fred McKinnon’s site.

Here was our set for the weekend:

• You are Holy (Prince of Peace)
• Song of Hope (Heaven come down)
• Run for the hungry presentation
• Cannons (Phil Wickham)
• Beautiful the Blood (Fee)
• Sermon (New series “BE”)
• I am crowned – (Mine – you can actually listen to a recording in the music player just to the right of this post)

It was great to do some of these songs with this band. Our lead guitarist for this weekend really worked the stuff up, had great tone and just nailed everything. Everyone in the group, really nailed everything this weekend!

It was a great weekend! Not a lot to critique. Of course there is stuff, we weren’t cd quality or anything, but it was a great weekend! For more reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place!

I also wanted to let you know that Kevin & I have been doing a series of Podcasts on Paul Baloche’s book “God Songs.” If you have interest in writing songs for worship, check it out! We’d love to have some of you on the podcast via interview and to talk about some of the chapters. Just get in touch with us. You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

If you missed last weeks’ podcast, I’d highly recommend you go check it out here. In this week’s episode, David and Kevin continue their discussion on songwriting through the book “God Songs.” I’d strongly recommend you pick up a copy of the book and go through it with us!

We’re going to be going through the book God Songs by Paul Baloche & Jimmy & Carol Owens. (If you click on the title, it will take you directly to the store on Paul’s site where you can buy your own copy of the book.) By the way, if you haven’t checked out Paul’s Site: leadworship.com, you should do that. There are tons of great resources there for your worship team.

If you’re a faithful listening to the worship ministry catalyst podcast, we would love to hear from you and we’d also love it if you’d take the time to share us with your friends and other worship leaders you know.

Whether you’re new or have been listening for quite some time, we would love to hear form you, as well as we would really appreciate some good feedback on iTunes, if you don’t mind taking a minute to do so that would be awesome!

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

This Sunday, we had one of our missionaries preach.  It wasn’t exactly a “Mission Week” like David had last Sunday, but it was cool and different having this missionary to India preaching on suffering. It gave everyone in the church a really different perspective; plus everyone was listening really well because George was kind of hard to understand

Here’s what our service looked like:

• Scripture Reading: Psalm 89:5-8 / Psalm 47:10-11
• Awesome is the Lord (Chris Tomlin)
• Your Grace is Enough (Chris Tomlin)
• Scripture Reading:  Romans 8:17-18 / Romans 5:2-5
• Still(Reuben Morgan / Hillsong)
• Good to Me (Old Calvary Chapel Song… can’t remember who wrote it; Craig something)
• Blessed Be Your Name (Matt Redman)
• Prayer for Offering
• It is Well  (Special arrangement for lead and tenor vocals; very cool!)
• Message: “An Eternal Perspective on Suffering” (George Varghese; missionary in India)
• Closing Thoughts / Transition into Business Meeting

We had a bit of a struggle transitioning into our Business Meeting.  We were trying to create a very smooth flow, but it didn’t work out so well.  There was some miscommunication, and a bunch of people ended up leaving and causing some distractions.  It’s hard to go from a worship service and then to talk business stuff.  If anyone has any good ideas, let me know!

To check out other weekend reviews, check out Fred McKinnon’s site!

That said, this weekend was quite a bit better than usual, at least in terms of the event itself. I really think our missions committee did a good job of putting on an event that drew people into the ministries we support as a church. As far as the communication from the stage goes, well, it still fit into my expectations. But, our people did stay and do quite a bit of sharing with the ministries who were represented, which was exactly the goal.

All that said, our worship team wasn’t quite up to snuff this weekend. We had our staff retreat this last week, which left me no time to confirm musicians and plan for this weekend until it was too late to do much about. Those musicians who did participate, did their best. But, we just didn’t have the time or the personnel to do something of excellence.

Here’s what we did this week:

• All the Earth will Sing Your Praises
• Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble
• Missionary talk #1
• Great in all the Earth
• You Said
• Missionary Talk #2
• Hear Our Praises

Since I’ve only been here for a couple of years, I wasn’t sure about some of theses songs and if they had been done in the past here. I was pleased to hear from a couple of people that they had, so at least they weren’t brand new to everyone.

Our band was piano, bass & drums, and we had two altos on the team. When you look at it that way, it kind of feels like a team of whomever was willing to play – played. It was a challenge to pull some of the songs off like all the earth will sing your praises and did you feel. Well, actually all of them had their challenges without full instrumentation.

However, I feel like God used us to lead our congregation in worship, which is obviously the most important thing.

That was our weekend around here, you should also head over to Fred’s Place and check out what other’s did this weekend.

But in the midst of all this busyness, God has been doing some neat things in my life.  The last several weeks, I’ve found myself thinking about our worship service a little differently.  I’ve been challenged to really examine everything we do in our service and see if it’s all pointing to God.  Even transitions can play a huge part in the worship experience.  As a result, I feel like the last couple weeks have been very focused on the Lord and having a unified message.  It’s been cool!

Here is what we did on Sunday:

• Opening Scripture Reading: Philippians 2 & John 3:16
• Hosanna (Paul Baloche)
• Here I Am to Worship  (Tim Hughes)
• Jesus, Name Above All Names (my friend wrote a new chorus to this classic song)
• Once Again (Matt Redman)
• King of Kings (Clay Heacocks; this is a great anthemic song from back in my days with Calvary Chapel Fellowships)
• Mission Focus: Missionaries Dwight and Becky Johnson
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• Jesus, What a Beautiful Name (Old Hillsong from 1996 I think)
• Message: “Descending Into Glory” – Luke 2 (Pastor Mike)
• Jesus, Name Above All Names  (reprise)

To check out what other worship leaders are doing, check out Fred McKinnon’s blog.

If you missed last weeks’ podcast, I’d highly recommend you go check it out here. In this week’s episode, David and Kevin continue their discussion on songwriting through the book “God Songs.” This week, we’re finishing up the first chapter, I’d strongly recommend you pick up a copy of the book and go through it with us!

We’re going to be going through the book God Songs by Paul Baloche & Jimmy & Carol Owens. (If you click on the title, it will take you directly to the store on Paul’s site where you can buy your own copy of the book.) By the way, if you haven’t checked out Paul’s Site: leadworship.com, you should do that. There are tons of great resources there for your worship team.

If you’re a faithful listening to the worship ministry catalyst podcast, we would love to hear from you and we’d also love it if you’d take the time to share us with your friends and other worship leaders you know.

Whether you’re new or have been listening for quite some time, we would love to hear form you, as well as we would really appreciate some good feedback on iTunes, if you don’t mind taking a minute to do so that would be awesome!

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

Here was our Set:

• Meet Us Here (Mike Honholtz)
• The Stand
• Communion Prep talk
• Beautiful the Blood
• Take the elements
• Holy, Holy, Holy (SCC Arr.)
• Revelation Song (Riddle)

For some reason, I just wasn’t real enamored with “The stand” this week. That could be because we didn’t have an electric to really help drive the song, but whatever it was, it just didn’t seem to be flowing and growing.

I did absolutely love doing Beautiful the Blood and Revelation Song. Those are definitely two of my favorites right now. We had to cancel our mid-week practice this week, because no one coule be there, but we really needed it. Someone needs to come up with an online way to rehearse people, where people can go to reheasal when they have time to, and not at the one time when we have practice scheduled. Does anyone have a good way of getting all the arrangment notes onto a chart or do you make up inidividual charts for each part. The charts I make up are pretty clear and they work fine when we have rehearsal, but when we don’t have enough time for rehearsal, I’d like to have a chart that people could rely on.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s place.

Kevin & I have been talking about doing a series on podcasting for quite some time now, and we’re thrilled to be getting started. When this topic first came up, we decided we’d want to give it quite a bit of thought so that our end result was more methodical than whimsical. That was when we decided not to reinvent the wheel. Instead, we’re going to be going through the book God Songs by Paul Baloche & Jimmy & Carol Owens. (If you click on the title, it will take you directly to the store on Paul’s site where you can buy your own copy of the book.) By the way, if you haven’t checked out Paul’s Site: leadworship.com, you should do that. There are tons of great resources there for your worship team.

If you’re a faithful listening to the worship ministry catalyst podcast, we would love to hear from you and we’d also love it if you’d take the time to share us with your friends and other worship leaders you know.

Whether you’re new or have been listening for quite some time, we would love to hear form you, as well as we would really appreciate some good feedback on iTunes, if you don’t mind taking a minute to do so that would be awesome!

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

The end result I think was pretty good.  I had several people come up after and thank me for how worshipful the service was.  I’m thinking to myself, “Really?  I was just trying not to end 30 minutes over!”  Isn’t it cool how God still works even when we’re thinking logistics.  I love that!

So here’s what our Sunday looked like:

• Open the Eyes of My Heart(Paul Baloche)
• Mission Focus: Dave & Pat Potts (supported missionaries back from the field)
• Revelation Song (Jamie Riddle… we’ve been doing this song this past couple weeks.  It’s a little tricky to learn, but a powerful song).
• Communion time, with servers passing out elements in between songs
• Holy God(Brian Doerksen… another song we’ve been doing recently that people how really embraced)
• Above All(Lenny LeBlanc and Paul Baloche)
• Welcome Time
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• Glorious(Paul Baloche… brand new song that hasn’t been released.  Front edge stuff!)
• Message: God Who? – Psalm 19

Hope everyone is staying fresh in the ministry.  Check out what other people are doing at Fred McKinnon’s blog.  CYA!

Last weekend we had an outside band in, “The Neverclaim.” You’ve probably heard me talkd about them before, and this week we had a husband & wife team leading. They are going to be leading worship for a couple of women’s conferences for the next couple of weekends, so they did some of the music they’ll be doing for those conferences this weekend.

Here was our set:

• I’m Singing (Kari Jobe)
• Joyful, Joyful (Passion arr.)
• Announcement
• You are Good (Houghton – Brewster arr.)
• All Who Are Thirsty
• You are Good (Kari Jobe)
• Surreneder
• Sermon
• Tell the World (Hillsong United)

To be honest, I was definitely the weak link this weekend. I was leaning on the band leader and vocal leader to keep time instead of them being able to lean on me. Next time I play drums, I’ll definitely be using a metronome to help me keep time so they can rest a little more in the groove. I also had forgotten how hard it is to remember where you are in a song when you’re playing drums, and if you don’t have the order of the song written down, it can be really easy to get lost. There’s nothing that you’re playing that helps lead you into the next section, your totally dependent on your memory and the worship leader. So, this is good reason to have good cues as a worship leader. You want your drummers to feel like they know where they’re going and when they’re supposed to go there.

The version of Tell the world that we (actually they) did at the close of the service was really cool. It was acoustic and had a very cool, acoustic/coffee shop  feel to it.

The two Kari Jobe songs are off of her new album. I’d recommend you check them out. They’re simple and easy to use for your congregational worship times. I don’t know of many of you have used his resources, but she’s also one of the vocalists on Paul Boloche’s Vocal workshop DVD in his Lead Worship Series.

For more weekend reviews check out Sunday Setlists over at Fred’s Place.

Luckily, I’m a firm believer that cultures change, music changes, and even the way we worship can change.  Have you ever wondered why Jesus never taught his disciples how to worship?  He taught them how to pray in Luke 11 (Lord’s Prayer), but there’s never any teachings about how to worship.  I think it’s because Jesus understood that things change.  As long as the message doesn’t change it’s okay if things are done in a new or different way.

Speaking of new: I’ve been doing a lot of new songs lately.  On a whim, I decided to try out “Revelation Song” as a special during the offering to see if I could get a read or vibe on if the song would work.  Man, oh man!  While the offering plate was going around, people were standing and worshipping and totally engaging in that song.  If you haven’t heard it yet, get on YouTube or buy it on iTunes: POWERFUL song!

Here’s what our Sunday service looked like:

• He Is Exalted (Twila Paris)
• Lord I Lift Your Name on High (Rick Founds)
• Baptisms
• Nothing But the Blood(hymn with a cool groove from a band I used to play with: forgivenmuch)
• You Alone(David Crowder)
• You Are My All in All (Dennis Jernigan)
• Mission Focus: MOPS and Club 66
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• Revelation Song(Jamie Riddle; Kari Jobe arrangement from New Life Church)
• Message: “Take This Bible and Love it” – 2 Timothy 3
• You Are My All in All (reprise: just the chorus)

To check out what other worship leader’s are doing from around the country, go over to Fred McKinnon’s blog; you might just get some cool ideas!

On the plus side: the service ended up going well.  It wasn’t perfect and we still had some sound problems; but those are the times when you just need to not worry about it and say “we’ve done all we can”.  People were blessed and God was glorified.  Here’s what our service looked like:

• Congregational Response: “Who is God?”
• Friend of God (Israel Houghton; PC&D cover)
• O, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing(my arrangement based on David Crowder)
• In Christ Alone (Stuart Townsend)
• Holy God(Brian Doerksen – This is the new song I taught last week and people are LOVING it!  I can’t say enough about this song; great tune!)
• Holy is the Lord (Chris Tomlin – another favorite at our church)
• Welcome / Prayer Night info
• Mission Focus: Varghese in India… announce short-term trip to India
• Body Life / Offering
• Thy Word (instrumental version of the song with just me on piano)
• Message: “Can I Trust the Bible?” – 2 Peter 1
• Holy God – reprise of song

That’s it for me!  To see what other people are doing check out Fred McKinnon’s blog.  Have a great week!

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I just found this great resource I wanted to share with you all. Bob Kauflin over at “Worship Matters” has posted some free recordings from the Worship God 09 conference.

Here’s the link:

http://www.worshipmatters.com/2009/09/08/twenty-four-free-mp3s-from-worshipgod09-now-available/

We also did things a little differently this week. Instead of just going through our normal routine, I added some readings from a couple of books to get us started and to add a little illustrative and educational component to the worship portion of the service. So, I read a little from “The Worshipping Artist” by Rory Noland & a little from “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis which Noland quotes in his book.

Here is what we did:

• Read from “The Heart of the Artist”
• Center
• Your Grace Is Enough
• I Am Free
• Read from “Mere Christianity”
• From the Inside Out
• Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone).
• Sermon
• I Am Crowned

It’s interesting because I had been thinking and working on a song that dealt with our topic for this weekend for a while now. Pastor Bob was talking about the basic idea of not being able to do anything to earn God’s Favor. The song I wrote started from Psalm 8 and developed into this song about how we need to live like we’re already crowned children of the king. People seemed to really enjoy the song, it worked really well to tie the sermon into a song.

We started a new series this weekend called “Breaking Free.” We’re using a graphic for our series that’s based off of a graphic we found over on creativemyk.com.  If you haven’t checked them out and you need graphic content, you should go there, it’s a great resource.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday setlists over at Fred’s Place.

Check out this youtube link of Brian performing the song live with just his guitar.  Or if you want to hear the album version of the song; you can listen to this video.  It’s such a great song, but not many people know about it.  Spread the word: this song is an anointed worship song!

Here’s what we did on Sunday:

• Your Grace is Enough (Chris Tomlin – Great opening song!)
• Unchanging (Chris Tomlin – Good followup song; they have the same first lines!)
• Holy God (Brian Doerksen – Man… I can’t say enough about this song!)
• Holy, Holy, Holy (Hymn – we came right out of the new song into this hymn; awesome!)
• Welcome / Greeting
• Mission Focus: Testimony from short-term team to Australia
• Presentation of Sunday School award
• Commission new Sunday School leaders
• Prayer for offering
• Sweetly Broken (Jeremy Riddle – We did this as a special song; great text!)
• Message: “It’s Who You Know” – Daniel 3
• Closing Song: Holy God Reprise

To check out what other worship leaders are doing, please visit Fred McKinnon’s blog

The conference that Kevin went to was the Deeper Conference.

Also, if you’d like to check out Paul Baloche’s website, you can do so by clicking here.

If you’re a faithful listening to the worship ministry catalyst podcast, we would love to hear from you and we’d also love it if you’d take the time to share us with your friends and other worship leaders you know.

Whether you’re new or have been listening for quite some time, we would love to hear form you, as well as we would really appreciate some good feedback on iTunes, if you don’t mind taking a minute to do so that would be awesome!

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

Here was our set:

• Come, Now is the time to Worship
• Welcome
• Worker Appreciation
• God of Wonders
• Better is One Day
• We Fall Down
• Message
• Surrender

This was the first time I’ve worked with the youth for a youth weekend at our church (even though I’ve been here for almost two years now) and it was great. One thing that was nice was that they listened to every thing I said and all the recommendations I made to them. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t always happen with the adults that I work with. And to think that teens get a bad rap for not listening, I think they did a great job.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists over at Fred’s.

This past Sunday was communion; and we had a guest speaker; and I introduced a new congregational song… it was a busy morning!  Our practice ran late; partly because we weren’t able to practice on Thursday.  Only one person was able to make it Thursday, so we tried to meet really early on Sunday… and we still ran late.  But I think the extra practice paid off because we nailed the new Paul Baloche tune.

This is a song that I learned at the worship conference I went to a few weeks ago.  The song hasn’t even been recorded yet, but the song impacted me so much at the conference that I just had to bring it to my church.  So I taught it to my team and we taught it to the church.  I think it’s going to take a few weeks for them to get comfortable with it, but I know this song has big potential.  Be watching for it early next year; I really think when it hits the radio that it’s going to be the next “Open the Eyes of my Heart” song.  Yeah… it’s that good!

Here’s what our Sunday looked like:

• Sing Your Praise (original song written by me)
• All Hail the Power (cool arrangement of the hymn I came up with)
• Lord Most High (older Vineyard song; I’m not sure who wrote it)
• Communion (with songs between the elements)
• Mystery (just the chorus of this wonderfully simple Charlie Hall tune.  We did it on Easter and it’s stuck with our people for some reason)
• Glorious(this is that new Paul Baloche tune I was mentioning.  Man I love this song!  Once it comes out, you’ll understand what I’m talking about )
• I’ll Fly Away (Jars of Clay arrangement; but a little faster)
• Sunday School launch
• Body Life / Prayer for offering
• Video Slideshow- I put together some scenery and nature pictures of my recent vacation to Hawaii and while the slideshow was going I played “This is My Father’s World”… it was cool!
• Message: “The Pursuit of Happiness” – Ecclesiastes 1 & 2 (Steve Tompert)
• Closing prayer and challenge

To see what other Worship Leaders did during the week, head over to Fred McKinnon’s blog and join in on the conversation.  Have a great week!

I don’t want to give away the whole episode, so check it out below!

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

This Sunday I had an older gentleman in our church lead worship.  I’ve been working on training a lot of younger worship leaders, but this guy actually used to be a worship leader about 20 years ago.  It was kind of fun seeing him in action and seeing his style; which is much different from mine!  But that’s a good thing: anytime we can bring variety and keep things different in our worship service, it gives our people something to look forward to and be excited about.

So Warren led worship by incorporating numerous songs and scriptures into the theme of “greatness”.  Basically, he started by asking the question: “What is so great about God?”  And then took various elements of God such as Him being our “great King”, or His “great Name”, or the “great power” of God, etc.  It was different, but kind of cool.

Warren ended up combining 13 songs and 15 different scripture passages throughout his worship set, so it’s a little hard to put down every song he did, but the service kind of looked like this:

• Welcome / Introduce Warren
• Worship Set on “Great” (included songs like “How Great is our God”, “Great is Thy Faithfulness”, “Immortal Invisible”, “There’s Just Something About That Name”, and many others!)
• Sunday School Implementation
• Mission Focus: The Haven’s (Missionaries to Reed College)
• Body Life / Offering
• Special Music: Sweet Hour of Prayer
• Message, “Enjoying Marital Intimacy”
• Closing Song: How Great Thou Art

It was nice to see a different style of worship leadership; and many of our older people appreciated the variance in music.  Not everyone is going to like the music 100% of the time, but I think we should always strive to make 100% of our people like the music at least some of the time.  That’s what ministering to the body of Christ is all about.

To check out other setlists throughout the country, hop on over to Fred McKinnon’s worship blog and see what other people are playing at their churches.

It was fantastic. We had a great time leading and the congregation really seemed to enjoy participating. This gave me the opportunity to do some of the songs we don’t normally get to do and it gave the congregation the opportunity to enjoy a simpler worship time before their personal schedules got really crazy. It was really cool.

Here was our Set:

• Rest In Your Peace (mine)
• Welcome
• Come Thou Fount
• Great & Marvelous (Love this tommy walker song)
• Speak to Me (Also, another great Tommy Walker song)
• Draw Me Nearer (Diane Sheets Arr.)
• Sermon
• All of my Days

Our vocalist really knocked great and marvelous out of the park this weekend. It was just a great time to simplify things and really get to enjoy the time of worship!

For more weekend Reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

I don’t want to give away the whole episode, so check it out below!

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

This weekend was my first weekend back after vacation, it was kind of like going back to school. I wasn’t gone for long, but it was still a little weird coming back. Maybe you’ve experienced that same feeling?

This was a great weekend. Our focus was on communion and enjoying our salvation. So, we did a short sermon and spent a little more time on communion as well as split the service up in a different way. The service was quite a bit shorter than normal, which might be considered a summer treat!

We also got to play one of my new songs at the end of the service as a special. It’s a song called “Rivers of Love.” I’ll put a recording up on our social network (worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com) soon.

Here was our service:

• Welcome
• Because of Your Love
• Alive Forever, Amen!
• Happy Day
• Sermonette
• Love Like Rain
• Jesus Paid It All
• Communion
• Rivers of Love

On Saturday night, we had a little problem with Jesus Paid It All, I started it a little too fast, which threw her off throughout the song. We fixed that for Sunday morning, so that was much better. We didn’t quite get enough work on Rivers of Love to be able to play it like I wanted it, but considering we only rehearsed for a short time before the service on Saturday, it worked out pretty well.

How did your services go? To hear from other worship leaders, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

So on Sunday, I did that: I opened up the service by simply sharing all the things that inspired and convicted me.  One of the biggest things was the idea of our church being a community and a family.  So, we spent nearly 20 minutes having “Family time”.  I’ve never tried anything like it before, but it went over surprisingly well!  I litterally had people get to know the person next to them and then I took the microphone around the church and had people share what God was doing in their lives.  It was great to see the response!

It was certainly a little risky, and I was a little nervous; but most of the feedback I got was positive so I think we’ll try it again sometime.  Here’s what our whole service looked like:

• “Family Time”
• Come, Now is the Time to Worship(Brian Doerkson)
• Here I Am To Worship (Tim Hughes)
• We Fall Down (Chris Tomlin)
• Testimonies from the Clark County Fair
• Glorious(this is a new song that Paul Baloche taught us at the conference.  It hasn’t been recorded yet so you can’t find it anywhere… but I really think this song has the potential to be the next “Open the Eyes of my Heart”!  After hearing it several times at the conference, I was able to pick up enough of it to bring back to church on Sunday… talk about cutting edge!)
• Message: “Loving a Fool” Part Two (Jim Draper)
• Closing video: “Cats in the Cradle” (this was in connection with Jim’s message on parenting)

There you have it!  For more weekend reviews, check out Fred McKinnon’s blog.  Have a great week!

But I got everything scheduled and now I can focus on what I really love: worship music!  This Sunday was incredible.  I really felt like God was using me and speaking through me.  The last several weeks I’ve tried to not let my emotions control how I perceive worship, and this week I really sensed that God was working.   At the end, we all kind of broke into this spontaneous chorus of “How Great Thou Art”; it was really neat!

Of course, the practice wasn’t that great.  We went super late and I was getting pretty stressed out.  I like to be done by 8:30 and we went all the way up until 9:00; any later and we wouldn’t have time for prayer.  I made a commitment long ago that I wouldn’t sacrifice prayer time for practice time.  I know some people disagree with that philosophy; but my take is that at a certain point you just need to give it to God.  So we did and I think God really moved this Sunday.

So, here was our service:

• Meet With Me(Ten Shekel Shirt)
• Thy Mercy (Caedmon’s Call)
• Mission Focus: Supported Missionaries in Italy
• Special Prayer Focus: Outreach at Clark County Fair
• Jesus Paid it All (arr. of hymn off the Passion album, “Everything Glorious”)
• Draw Me Close (Kelly Carpenter)
• Blessed Be Your Name (Matt Redman)
• Shout to the Lord (Darlene Zschech… classic!)
• How Great Thou Art (this was a spontaneous song and our whole church rose up as we lifted our voices… it was a sweet moment)
• Message: Loving a Fool; a message on parenting (Jim Draper)
• Draw Me Close Reprise

To check out what other people are doing, go over to Fred McKinnon’s blog.  God bless!

Wow, it’s been quite a while since I’ve done a review. Sorry about that. Life has been a little crazy and quite honestly I’m a little burned out right now, so those would be the two major culprits for why.

This weekend, we didn’t have a drummer. Every week seems to be a struggle to find a drummer, and I probably could have found one for this week, but as I started thinking about it, I realized I might be shooting myself in the foot by always finding someone. If there happens to be a drummer in our church who just hasn’t stepped forward, and they always see that there’s a drummer playing, they may think that they’re not needed. So, going a week or two here and there without a drummer might actually prove to be a more effective recruiting tool. Who knows, I guess I’ll find out.

I also decided to try something different this week. Instead of just doing a couple of songs, giving announcements and doing a couple more songs, I decided to start off with the welcome, and then just plow right through 6 songs. We never do six songs, I’m pretty sure the most we’ve ever done since I’ve been here is 5, so this was a first for us. But, I’ve been thinking and evaluating our worship services over the past few weeks, and one of the things I think I’ve figured out is that one of the reasons people don’t enter in to worship is because we’re not giving them the opportunity. We’re starting & stopping and we never give them enough time to put the week behind them and get into worship. So, that’s what we did and It worked quite well.

Here was our set:

• The Heart of Worship
• Here I Am To Worship
• A Greater Song
• How Can I Keep From Singing
• Hosanna
• All The Earth Will Sing Your Praises
• Message
• Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus

For more Weekend Reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

It’s a tricky topic, one that I’m sure you have dealt with a lot in your experience with being involved in a worship ministry.

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

We also talk about the huge loss in the music industry, MJ & all the things we have because of the King of Pop.

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

Here is what Dan did on Sunday:

• Lord Reign in Me
• Take My Heart (Holiness) (Scott Underwood)
• Baptisms
• Forever (Chris Tomlin)
• You Are My All in All(Classic Dennis Jernigan)
• There is None Like You
• Mission Focus: Commission Michelle for Australia
• Body Life
• Special Song: Oh Lord, You’re Beautiful (Keith Green)
• Message: Forgiveness is a Choice
• Forever (Nails in Your Hands)

We did a beautiful acoustic version of Forever (Nails in Your Hands) at the end as we had a responsive time of forgiveness and looking at the cross.  It was pretty powerful and I was happy with how it all went down.  Check out what other Worship Leaders are doing over at Fred McKinnon’s place.  Have a great week!

That didn’t stop us from having some great music.  It actually was one of the better sets we’ve done (musically).  Practice went okay; I was a little nervous about some of the transitions and hits/stops we were doing.  The first two songs went pretty smooth, but then around the fourth song things really started grooving.  We were in the pocket and it felt great.

I’m still struggling with that concept of not letting my emotions be an indicator of how good or bad the service was.  David and I even recorded a podcast episode about that.  It’s hard when you “feel” like things were flat… or when you “feel” like things rocked.  There certainly needs to be emotion–after all: what we do is a very emotional thing.  So, I’m still wrestling through how to be a good Worship Leader that has passion and emotion but isn’t dictated by it.  It’s a struggle worth fighting for!

Here’s what we did on Sunday:

• Your Grace is Enough (Tomlin)
• My Redeemer Lives (Reuben Morgan: Hillsong)
• Open the Eyes of my Heart(Paul Baloche)
• Forever (A song a friend of mine wrote: John Ross)
• Mighty to Save(Another Hillsong: Reuben Morgan and Ben Fielding I think)
• The Stand (United: Joel Houston or Marty Sampson… one of those guys)
• Mission Focus: Commission Dwight Johnson for long-term ministry in Taiwan
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• VBS Presentation
• Message: “Facing Our Problems Together” (Book of Philemon)
• The Stand (this was a responsive song I played by myself while people came forward to the alter for prayer; it was great!)

To check out what other Worship Leaders are doing, go to Fred McKinnen’s website.  God bless!

It’s kind of cool having a smaller band because everyone gets a little more exposure and the sound is a lot tighter.  Of course, you also have the potential to highlight any mistakes you make; but I’m proud of my crew on Sunday.  I think we did well!  Here’s what our service looked like:

• Patriotic Medley (This was a smattering of songs like “God Bless America”, “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, etc.  Our church has a lot of veterans and many people who “bleed red, white, and blue”, so these kinds of patriotic things are always very special for our church).
• Your Love Oh Lord (Third Day)
• Come Thou Fount (Standard hymn arrangement; with a few modified chords)
• You are my King (Amazing Love) (Billy Foote)
• Sanctuary/I Exalt Thee Medley (Classic songs; can’t remember who wrote them)
• There is Power in the Blood (We did a bluegrass/southern gospel version of this song; it was fun!)
• Mission Focus: Testimony from the Czech Republic
• Prayer for Offering
• Message: “How to Have a Good Fight”
• Sanctuary Reprise

We did a lot of “older songs” on Sunday… but you know what: it was awesome!  I think a lot of times I shy away from doing songs that were written 10+ years ago.  And while a lot of songs have a “shelf life” and you need to just let some of them die at pasture, there are other songs that have a lot of meaning despite their age.  I’m trying to do better about not looking at the year the song was written, but looking at the message in the song.

Well… that’s it for me! Check out what other people are doing over at Fred McKinnon’s site.  God bless!

We do some talking about some ways to stay sharp as a piano player and some of the philosphy we use when we play, then we start with some of the basics.

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

Having to have rehearsal on Sunday morning was a little challenging for some of our members. Granted, that’s what most of you do, but our people aren’t used to that. At my last church we met at 7:15 every Sunday morning, here we never meet that early.

So, considering we only had Sunday morning rehearsal and one service, it all went pretty well. We weren’t perfect and I made plenty of mistakes, but the sum of the whole was pretty good.

Here was our Set:

• Beautiful One
• I am Free
• Welcome
• Amazing Grace (My Chains)
• Pardoning Blood (A new song I wrote)
• Sermon
• You are my King

I’ll get a recording of the song I wrote up on our player for you to listen to, you should go check out some of the other songs that are on there. (At the writing of this post, it’s just to the right —> )

For more weekend Reviews Check out Sunday Setlists over at Fred’s Place. You can also check out Kevin’s post.

I have to remind myself that our worship of Jesus is not contingent on feelings, but it’s hard when you’re not getting that “feeling”.  Do you know what I mean?  Don’t get me wrong: the service was good and people were connecting with God… it just didn’t feel as “powerful” as it did during practice.  I know that probably sounds terribly unspiritual; but that’s how I felt about it.

So here’s what we did:

• Your Grace is Enough(Matt Maher; Chris Tomlin cover)
• Testimony from Junior High Camp
• Missionaries in town (David and Catherin Love)
• Be Thou My Vision (my arr.)
• All Creatures of our God and King (David Crowder arr.)
• Holy is the Lord (Chris Tomlin)
• Holy is the Lord(Vineyard; Jeff Searles I think)
• Message: “Dealing with Anger” (Guest speaker: Jim Draper)
• Closing: Holy is the Lord Reprise

We had a layperson in our church give the message on Sunday; he’s spoken a couple times and also teaches a Sunday School class.  He does a great job and is a great teacher… I always like it when Jim shares from God’s word.  To find out what others are doing on Sunday mornings, check out Fred McKinnon’s blog.  God bless!

We had two different drummers, one for Saturday evening and one for Sunday morning. They both did great, especially considering the extremely little time they had to rehearse.

We had a full band this week, we had two acoustics. I’ll be splitting these guys up though. I had paired a new guy with one of our more seasoned-chord-fiends for a while to get his feet wet, but this weekend he reached the place where he was comptent on his own and the challenge of working a band with two acoustics outweighed the risks of putting him on his own. So, next time around, he’ll be on his own.

I have to confess, I haven’t been preparing as much for worship as I should have been. This week I did though, and it did pay off. Especially for my vocals. I still had my share of pitchy parts, but the whole was better than previous weeks. I just realized this week why my voice is so much weaker now than it was. Aside from all the sinus & Allergy problems I’ve been having, I’m not singing nearly as much. I used to have both choir and worship band rehearsal once a week, now I’m just down to worship rehearsal, so I’m not working my voice as much as I should. So, this week, I’ve been singing with a lot of Steven Curtis Chapman & doing vocal workouts as well, they’re both really paying off.

Here was our Set:

• Today is the Day
• All We Need
• Missions Prayer
• All who are thirsty
• Rescue
• Sermon
• Breathe.

The sermon is part of our series on the Lord’s prayer. This week was about God providing our daily bread, being our source of life. We really focused on the “You are my Daily Bread.” portion of breathe and it really seemed to connect with people. Great weekend.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

We do some talking about some ways to stay sharp as a piano player and some of the philosphy we use when we play, then we start with some of the basics.

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

On the positive, we ended right on time and everything flowed very smoothly.  But in a way, I kind of feel like I cheated.  I don’t know how to explain it.  Maybe part of it is because we did less songs, so I don’t really feel like I had to put as much into the service.  Maybe another part of it is because I had one of the gals on the worship team leading 3 of the 5 songs.  I’m not sure what it is… but I just don’t feel like I had as much invested this Sunday.  Anyone else ever feel that way?

But like I said, we ended on time which was a huge plus.  Here’s what our service looked like:

• Days of Elijah (Robin Mark)
• Welcome
• Mission Focus: Summer Workers for VBS
• Prayer for Offering
• Beautiful One (Tim Hughes)
• Forever (Nails in Your Hands) (Richard Cimino I think… it’s an old Calvary Chapel tune I used to sing in Junior High )
• Before the Throne of God Above (Great modern day hymn; not sure off the top of my head who wrote it.  It’s very similar to “In Christ Alone”)
• Majesty (Delirious… one of my favorite worship songs.  Our church loves this tune, and we really rocked it out on Sunday!)
• Testimony on Communication
• Message on Communication: Proverbs 18:19-22
• Father’s Day Presentation

Considering that there was a lot of things going on (Testimony, Father’s Day presentation), I was very happy to end on time… now I just have to balance how to feel invested in all aspects of the worship service.  For more weekend reviews, check out Fred McKinnen’s Blog.

So, it was Father’s day, and we didn’t really do anything special for it. We showed a video and handed out a book to dads, but other than that, we didn’t really pay much attention to it.

Here was our set:

• Never Gonna Stop
• Video
• Father’s Day Prayer
• A Mighty Fortress (My Arr.)
• Your Grace is Enough
• Surrender
• Sermon
• The Stand

We finally did the stand this weekend. I know a ton of you out there have done it a lot, but it was new for us, and it seems like people like it.

We had some tempo problems this week, lots of rushing. We also had some tuning problems, both with the instruments and vocals, it probably wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t perfect (not that it will ever be). I just hate it when we have good musicians in the congregation and the music isn’t as good as it could be. I know we’re not doing the music for them, but…..

We were trying to do a transition between “Your Grace is Enough” and “surrender” with just a one beat head nod from me, and it just wasn’t working. I was trying to depict the tempo with the head nod (much like I do when I’m conducting, only that’s with my hands), and it just wasn’t happening. I think we might be able to get better at it, but not this week.

That’s what we did, for more check out Sunday Set lists over at Fred’s Place.

I echo David’s comments that it’s totally worth it to move in that direction.  It certainly takes a lot more work, but I’m excited to see people in our church really taking ownership of the worship ministry and getting excited about songs and creating themes, etc.

So here is what we did on Sunday:

• Your Grace is Enough (Chris Tomlin)
• You’re Worthy of My Praise (David Ruis; classic song!)
• Welcome / Greeting
• Mission Focus: Graduating Students
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• I Need Thee Every Hour (Hymn with very cool mellow guitar finger-picking)
• You Alone (the song that made David Crowder famous!)
• You Are My All in All (Another classic that our people love)
• Agnus Dei (powerful chorus; very majestic)
• Message: “How Come We Can’t Get Along?” – Genesis 3
• There is a Redeemer (Keith Green; just guitar… very cool)

We had a lot of slower, older songs that really featured the guitar and our vocalist.  It worked out really good because as Dan was leading he had some power vocals supporting him.  I got a lot of great feedback; especially from some older people who really appreciated the guitar.  I’ve been trying to do less piano… maybe I won’t even play next week

To check out what other Worship Leaders are doing on Sunday, go on over to Fred McKinnon’s blog.  Have a great week!

It’s such a blessing to be able to have a solid team to step up on the stage and give me a weekend to experience worship from a different perspective. It’s also great to know that there’s a solid person there if I have to be gone for whatever reason.

Here was our (their) set:

• Because of Your Love
• Youth Presentation
• Famous One
• You Never Let Go
• Enough
• Sermon
• All of my days

It was a great weekend, it gave me a chance to see some of the things that are going on in the sanctuary, and to know some of the issues that we need to conquer. I’d really recommend this if you haven’t done it, even if you don’t have the resources to do it right now, start working towards it, it will pay off.

For more weekend review, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

Do you know what I’m talking about? You know….(long awkward pause)…. quiet song …… (long awkward pause with weird, random instrument noises) …. Loud song (scared to death from the shock of the loud sound, heart rate jumps through the roof). ….. beuler….beuler…. Etc.

Picking up from last week’s episode we’re talking once again about creativity, and specifically about how to create good flow when we’re incorporating some of these creative elements. We don’t want the people whom we are trying to lead in worship to be victims of a worship tsunami, we want them to enjoy worship flow.

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

34:48

I take a lot of the blame because I think I was being somewhat naive about how much stuff I could pack into 75 minutes.  We did some scripture readings, a special song, communion, Summer Ministry highlight, a new song… and Pastor Mike began his new sermon series and was giving an overview of the entire series.

So, the whole service ended up being almost an hour and 45 minutes… that’s right: we went almost 30 minutes late.  That’s the kind of stuff that drives me crazy!  Melanie (my wife) had to remind me like 20 times to stop looking at my watch, but it was hard not to!  I was stressed and frustrated about the whole thing.

But on the positive side; it was actually a really great service!  And we’re lucky that we only have the one service so it didn’t interfere with other start times or anything.  People actually stayed engaged the whole time and most people I talked with didn’t even notice we were so late.  So, I feel okay about it, but I still am a little frustrated and want to make sure this week that I don’t plan too much!

• Opening Scripture: Romans 5:15-17
• Your Grace is Enough (Matt Maher, covered by Chris Tomlin… this was a new one for us but a lot of people knew it already)
• Enough (Chris Tomlin)
• Draw Me Close (Kelly Carpenter)
• Communion (with songs in-between elements)
• Jesus Messiah (Chris Tomlin)
• Scripture: Romans 5:7-11
• Mystery (Charlie Hall)
• Your Grace is Enough (we did the whole song again because it was new and also appropriate at the end of communion)
• Caring Board Update
• Summer Ministry Focus
• Offering
• There is a Fountain (very cool arrangement of hymn)
• Message: “You Were Created for Relationship” – Genesis 1 & 2

So, as you can see it was a lot to try and fit in 75 minutes.  There were some things I could have cut, but like I said: it was good service that flowed well.  In fact, one of the gals on my worship team told me this might have been her favorite service to date from start to finish.  So I have really mixed emotions about the whole thing.  I want to stay on time and on track, but I want to be open and allow for God to do big things.  What do you do?

To check out what other people are doing, go on over to Fred’s blog and join in on the conversation.  Have a great week!

When we first started, I simply publicized the possibility to our congregation and we had three or four photographers express interest.

That’s one of the big benefits of this team, there are already people in all of our churches that have an interest in photography. Of course there will be varying skill levels, but there are photographers in all of our churches. Parents who love taking good pictures of their kids, teens who are taking photography classes in high school, art majors in college even professionals who have a lot to offer.

So, why a photography team? Don’t we have enough to manage in other areas of the Worship Ministry?

• Event Photography. One of the easiest and most obvious ways to put a photography team to use is to offer their skills to yours an other ministries in the church to photograph events around the church. It gets your ministry great exposure and it documents the event for the other ministry. We have a form that people can fill out on our website, asking for a photographer for the event and then we schedule the photographer.
• Photograph worship backgrounds. This is one of the great aspects of this team, creative and specialized backgrounds for worship songs. Of course a lot of churches are using video backgrounds, but with most presentation software, we are now able to use different backgrounds for different parts of the songs that keep the background from feeling static. One of the things I have done is assign a worship song to a photographer and ask them to take pictures for different key words of phrases throughout the song. When people see images on the screen that they might recognize as local, it gives a certain sense of ownership to the worship song and worship service. Suddenly people go from looking at a generic, stock image or photograph to looking at something they recognize and their mind connects the thing they know in the image with the words or song that they’re singing. Then when they see that image, either in a photograph or in real life they have a chance of remembering that connection which helps take worship out of our weekend service and into the week.
• Photograph pictures for sermon series
• Build a community of artists. Give people a place to connect with people who think similar to them.
• Seasonal and thematic photographic artwork for decorations around the church
• Increase the skill levels of the photographers and get a win – win. They win because they increase their skill level, you win because you get better pictures. (Set up a flickr group, this will give you one place with which you can collect all the pictures – instead of getting a bunch of different discs – and you can give constructive criticism and encouragement.

At my last church we had started to build a photography team, it was headed up by a professional photographer. He was always taking pictures around the church of various events. However, there were many events that he couldn’t attend because of his schedule, so we started talking about building a team of photographers who would be availble to take pictures of events around the church.

So, here are some things that you’ll want to do.

1. Find your subject. Start with the people you know who take pictures. You’ve seen them around with their cameras, taking pictures every chance they can get. They always have new pictures to show you. They have new profile pictures on their facebook accounts. Compile a list and contact information. Start to Eavesdrop on conversations in the foyer of your church. Listen for people talking about pictures, about getting pictures taken and any other photographic oriented discussion going on.
2. Compose the image. Once you do that, you’ll want to make an email list (if you use Planning Center online, then you should use that) and start to contact people, get some buzz going about your group. Let the buzz grow for a while before you schedule your first meeting.
3. Build the frame. You’ll want to have the framework of the team set up before you have your first meeting. What do you want the group to accomplish? Do you want to simply have photographers who can take pictures of events, or do you want to build artistic community among the group? How will you accept request for photographers from other ministries in the church? How are you going to build community? For our events, we have a form on our web site that ministry leaders can go and fill out, which sends me and email, then I use Planning Center to schedule a photographer.
4. Crop the image. Now that you’ve the basic framework in place, you’re ready to get the group together. There will be a natural cropping (thinning) process that will happen as people figure out that they aren’t as serious as they thought they were, so you can expect your group to shrink a little bit. However, you’ll be left with the best and most committed photographers which will be a good thing.
5. Send the pictures for processing. We use a flickr group as the hub for photographers to use to upload pictures to and to give feedback to other photographers and support one another. This is also a good way to build community & it’s free. It’s also cool to be able to use this for assignments. You’ll want to email the assignment out so everyone gets it right away, but then you can create a thread in your flickr group for people to use to upload their pictures to and keep them organized. You could also set up a blog, and give log in information to the members of the group so they could log in and upload their images.
6. Display the image. Now that you’ve gotten the group together, and it’s functioning, you’ll want to make sure to display the images in some form or fashion. This of course will be determined by what the purpose of your particular group is, but here are some examples: Hang large prints in your foyer and throughout the building as decor, use the images as background images for a song, (more than just one please) create a photo directory for your church or for a specific ministry, etc.

That’s what I know, but these few things will help you get on your way to starting a fairly well functioning photography team. For the rest of the stuff that’s not in here, be creative!

So, this weekend we had all of our 1st stringers on the docket and it makes all the difference in the world. I could trust the drummer and rest in his groove, I could work around the electric guitarist, figure out my stuff and know that it wouldn’t change in the middle of the worship service. Our Acoustic player was rock solid, holding the rhythm extremely well, and doing some other really nice and tasteful stuff, and our bass player was solid, picking up the groove with the drummer really well. We had to vocalists who led, so I could just focus on keys. It was great.

We had a few glitches at the Saturday evening service, but we got them all ironed out before our Sunday morning service. For instance, the opening prayer happened before the first song instead of after it, which made the start of the song that was supposed to be after a prayer, but was after a song pretty rough. That kind of threw the band for a loop.

Here was our set:

• Salvation is here
• Opening Prayer
• Let God Arise
• Endlessly
• Communion
• Nothing but the blood
• Sermon
• How can I keep from singing?

I may throw some recordings up here for you to listen to. It may not be as good as your group, but we felt pretty successful this weekend. I have to confess, I stacked the deck this weekend. I did everything I could to make sure that we had all of our A players playing together this weekend. I had several motivations, but it really paid off. I think it was good for our musicians (on stand and off) to hear a really good sound coming from a group of people we all know, not a group that we bring in from the outside. If you’ve never stacked the deck on a weekend, I’d highly recommend it. It pays off immediately and long-term.

For more weekend reviews, check out “Sunday Set Lists” over at Fred’s Place.

In this edition of the Worship Ministry Catalyst Podcast, David & Kevin talk about breaking out of that box and trying to do something different. I don’t want to spill the beans, so you should just listen to it!

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

So, Dan said yes and it was just him and me on Sunday… and it was AWESOME!  I probably had more positive feedback this Sunday then I have in a long time.  People really enjoyed the laid back, coffeehouse vibe.  Dan led most of the songs and I sang tenor and played some backup piano.  Dan did a really great job and I think he realized some of his potential for future worship leadership.

Here’s what we did on Sunday:

• Sing Your Praise (original song I wrote)
• Welcome / Sunday School update
• Commission Lisa for ministry in the Czech Republic
• Body Life / Offering Prayer
• Here I Am To Worship (Tim Hughes)
• Better is One Day (Matt Redman)
• God of Wonders (City on a Hill)
• Knowing You (Billy Foote I think??)
• How Great is Our God (Chris Tomlin)

In all, it was very nice and easy Sunday.  And it was great for me because it didn’t require much prep time for me.  Dan didn’t need any charts and we didn’t need any special practices.  It was great coming off vacation and being able to trust in my leaders to take care of business.  Check out more of these reviews at Fred’s blog.

However, everything ended up being pretty good. Practice yesterday was pretty rough, but last night went pretty well, and this morning’s service went even better.

On a sad note, we said good-bye to one of our pastors today. Since our finances have been a little smaller than normal, we had to let go of one of our pastors and today was his last day. That kind of put a certain hamper on things, but I think we recovered fairly well.

Here was our set:

• Awesome is the Lord Most High
• Pastor Send-off
• Indescribable
• God of Wonders (The forgivenmuch arr. we used at Easter)
• Be Thou My Vision (My Arr. with a Bridge I wrote for it)
• Sermon
• I’ll Go Where You Want Me To Go (My Arr. of the old hymn with a few word changes)

This was also the end of our “So You’re Dead Now What?” Series. So, we’re done with trying to find songs about Heaven. I actually ran out of songs that we knew that had a heaven theme, so I went a little different direction.

For more weekend reviews check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

We also celebrate a few milestones in this episode, both personally and “organizationally.”

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

That’s what this weekend was for me. We had a pretty solid group of musicians, who were able to hold their now, yet we were having other issues – like timing and rushing, etc. All in all, it was (…insert long writing pause for memorial day festivities…) still good, just frustrating to have issues like timing.

Here was our set:

• Alive Forever, Amen
• Read Isa 6:1-4
• Holy, Holy, Holy
• Prayer of focus
• How Great is our God
• Glory in the highest
• Fellowship
• Sermon (On Heaven)
• I Can Only Imagine
• Revelation Song

As far as the music connecting with people, that seemed to be really great. We’ve never done I can only imagine at our church, but people knew it pretty well. And ending on Revelation song after our Pastor shared a lot from the book of Revelation was also great.

One more week focusing on heaven and the after-life, then we’re back to normal. There aren’t all that many songs about heaven that we currently sing. Makes it a challenge.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

As I mentioned in my blog last week, I’ve been doing a lot of work to raise up other Worship Leaders in our church.� This Sunday, I had a guy on our team do a “Phase-3″ worship service (where he plans, prepares, and executes the entire service).� It was really cool!

One of the benefits of having others lead worship is that it keeps things fresh and exciting. Ryan has a different musical taste and style then me, so the songs he selected are not ones I would normally do on a Sunday… but they totally worked! That’s the beauty of worshipping in community together and having others who can compliment you. So even though I wouldn’t do these songs normally, when Ryan led them he did it with conviction and passion and it really worked out well.

Here’s what the morning looked like:

• Forever With You (Decyfer Down… cool Christian alt-rock band that sounds a lot like the early days of Creed.� We did this song as a Prelude with full band and vocals… it was a great way to set the tone of the morning.� Check out this song by clicking the link)
• Welcome / Memorial Day Prayer
• Mission Focus: Commission Colin Fenn (young high schooler who is going to Africa during the summer)
• Body Life / Offering Prayer
• You Never Let Go(David Crowder; we played images of flags and Arlington Cemetery during the song… VERY powerful!)
• Offering(Paul Baloche)
• Message: “How to Let God Know You’re Grateful” – Hebrews 13
• Rest (Skillet)
• Show Me Your Glory (Third Day)
• Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) (Chris Tomlin)
• Offering (Reprise with full band this time)

You can see we did a lot of “commercial” type songs; but it was really cool. And people responded surprisingly well. I had my reserves about the music, but I was super excited how it all went down. You can check out what other people did on Sunday by going to Fred McKinnon’sblog. Btw, Fred was recently featured on the CCLI video section.� Good job Fred!

I don’t have any evidence to back this up, but I have a theory. A Senior Pastor once told me that people cling to the music of their youth. In other words, if someone has an emotional connection to a song when they’re young, they’ll likely become attached to that song and to other songs that are in that style and even the style itself. This is one possible answer to why some of the older people you know might cling so tightly to hymns and Gaither choruses.

That’s my theory for what happened this season on American Idol. I’m not convinced that America loved Adam Lambert as much as the judges did. Granted, he is a performer and was able to use the stage, etc., however, the judges pushed him hard all season long. There were very few times that something negative came out of the judges mouths, no matter how ridiculous his rendition of a song was.

Because his voice sounded so much like what all of judges cut their teeth on as performers and producers, they had a stronger emotional connection to Adam than the other contestants and in the process convinced a lot of the impressionable minds in America that he already was the American Idol. As objective as they claim to be, or at least they’re supposed to be, I don’t think that they were able to separate their emotions from their logic (if they even have any). However, if the top 40 is any indication of what America likes to listen to, it’s not KISS or whatever other 80’s rock group Adam could be the lead singer of. (Yes I know a lot of that music is making a comeback, but it’s still no where near the rest of the music in the top 40).

You see, I think America puts up with certain genres of music during American Idol because it’s American Idol. However, once the shows over, I think we all go back to our preferences, which for me would explain why some of the idols have been extremely successful and others have tanked.

It’s something we need to think about. Do we do the same thing? Do we choose music based on what we connect with emotionally or do we pick music based on what we think will connect with our congregations. Sometimes they’re the same, sometimes they’re not. For me, there have been a lot songs that I haven’t connected with that many people in our congregation have, so we do those songs.

So, as you field conspiracy theories about why Adam Lambert didn’t win American Idol, may it be a constant reminder to you to be thinking about the music you’re selecting for your congregation, are you picking it for you, or are you picking it for them.

This is the first time we actually talk about the idea of a worship leadership team, a team that gets together to discuss what’s going on in the Worship Arts Ministry and to talk about direction and vision.

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

So, on Sunday I had a young gal who helps out in youth group leading in a “Phase 2″ setting.  I have three phases of worship leadership that I empower people with.  The first is where I pick the songs and just have the other person leading on the chorus of a couple songs.  The second phase is where I pick the songs, but I have the other person leading almost all the songs; including any “wrap-arounds” (welcome, call, challenge, etc.).  The final phase is where I have the other person pick out the music and lead the whole thing from start to finish.  Next Sunday I’m having one of my leaders to a “Phase 3″ worship service… I’ll let you know how it goes!

In the meantime, here is what we did on Sunday:

• Meet With Me(Ten Shekel Shirt… anyone remember them?)
• Your Love is Amazing (Hallelujah)(I think Brian Doerkson or Scott Underwood; it was originally recorded on the sequel to the Vineyard “Hungry” album titled, “Surrender”)
• Open the Eyes of My Heart(Classic Paul Baloche)
• Jesus, Name Above All Names(old Maranatha tune with a new chorus that my friend, Brian Cheney wrote)
• It is You (Newsboys)
• Mission Focus: Brian and Melanie Stark in Australlia
• Body Life / Offering
• Special: Turn Your Eyes (we did this as a special song because I borrowed a very cool arrangement that isn’t “normal”… from my good friend, Scott Olsen http://www.myspace.com/scottolsenband)
• Message: “Who is This King of Glory” – Hebrews 12
• Who is This King of Glory (Third Day)

You can check out more Sunday setlists at Fred’s blog.  See you next week!

That brings up a question: How do you get new talent into you church? If you’re hurting for Electric guitarists, for instance, how do you get new electric players to come to your church, or to join you? I know it’s an age-old question, one that many of us and many of our predecessors have been asking. If you have any advice for me, I’d love to hear it.

I had a set chosen that was going to require some electric guitar, and wouldn’t really be possible without it, so I had to change a couple of songs that we were going to do and replace them with a song or two that I could carry on the piano.

Here was the set we ended up doing:

• Happy Day (Fee)
• Welcome
• Today is the Day (Brewster)
• Beautiful the Blood
• Amazing Love (That rescued Me) (Mike Honholtz)
• Message
• The Love of God (MercyMe Arr.)

For the most part, we pulled the songs off quite well without an electric, there were times when we despereately need the electric or something to add some of the power that the song was lacking. We didn’t have that much to build to on some of the more powerful parts of songs like Beautiful the Blood and Today is the Day.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

Our service on Sunday had a “Mother’s Day” focus.  We’ve been going through the book of Hebrews, and this week we were in chapter 11 (The Hall of Faith).  Pastor Mike made some great connections about faith and Sarah bearing Isaac.  So, our worship set had a lot songs about faith and walking a life of worship in faith.

There were a few glitches along the way… the biggest thing is that two of our stage lights burned out during the service (what are the chances of two going out!)  The whole stage right was so dark; it was annoying.  Then there was some mix-up with the Mother’s Day presents we were giving to all the ladies.  Things kind of fell apart at the end; which was kind of frustrating because we planned so much for this morning.  But I’ve learned those things happen and sometimes you just shake it off and start over again on Monday.

Here’s how our Sunday looked:

• Awesome is the Lord (Chris Tomlin)
• Famous One (Tomlin)
• My Faith Has Found a Resting Place (Great old hymn)
• Come Ye Sinners(another hymn with great text; we did it like the Robbie Seay Band cover)
• Enough (Tomlin again?!)
• Mission Focus: Gideon’s International
• Baby Dedication (on Mother’s Day… it rocked!)
• Hebrews 11 Montage (this was awesome; I spent a lot of work on this putting together different pictures that represent the various people in Hebrews 11; we then had some voice overs reading through the scripture… it was super cool!)
• Message: Living the Adventure of a Lifetime (Hebrews 11:7-40)
• Mother’s Day Presentation and presents

The music was good and went smoothly, it was more of just the technical stuff throughout the service and some details that fell apart.  In all, I think the Mothers appreciated the service and God was glorified.  To see what other worship leaders did on Mother’s Day, go on over to Fred McKinnon’s blog.

The rest of the weekend wasn’t about Mothers, we’re starting a new series this weekend on the After life. We’re using the series graphics that Lifechurch.tv put out for a series they did called “So you’re dead, now what?” They’re a great, high quality graphic and it makes your job a lot easier if you have anything to do with the series or series graphics, I’d strongly recommend you check them out.

This weekend had its bumps. Our drummer didn’t show, and we were doing some new songs, well not really new, but they were new to our group. It’s hard to find very many songs about heaven and the afterlife that are contemporary, so if you know any, please let me know!

Here was our set:

• All The Earth Will Sing Your Praises
• Great in all the Earth (Mike Honholtz)
• “Why She Deserves a Day” video (View it below.)
• Prayer for mothers
• Did you feel the Mountains Tremble?
• We Will Dance
• Sermon
• Take my life (Hymn – Tomlin Arr. – didn’t work cut it for Sunday)
• Here am I (Mike Honholtz)

Again, if you have any songs that are great contemporary songs about Heaven or the afterlife, I’d appreciate your help. (Stryper’s “To Hell With the Devil” doesn’t count.)

For more Reviews check out Sunday setlists at Fred’s Place.

Meanwhile, back at Laurelwood things went smoothly and without any glitches.  I have spent over a year now intentionally training and raising up other worship leaders within our church body.  There are now 5 people on my worship team who have led a service and 3 of those 5 could do an entire service without me there.  It is so exciting to see people stepping up and to empower them and free them into ministry.  It takes a lot more work to raise up other people (simply because I’m a control freak and it’s “easier for me to do it myself”)… but the rewards are so awesome and we’re starting to see the fruits of it at Laurelwood.

So, Angie Parr planned the service, led and executed the whole thing; and everyone I talked to said she did an awesome job!  Also, we had a lay leader in our church preach because Pastor Mike was at the Men’s Retreat too.  And we had another lay person lead communion… how cool to see the Body of Christ stepping up and working together.  It’s so awesome to see that Sunday church can happen when the Church gets involved.  Praise God!

Here’s what Angie did on Sunday:

• Call to Worship
• Beautiful One (Tim Hughes)
• Indescribable (Laura Story, but done like the Tomlin cover)
• Communion (with songs sung while the servers pass out the elements)
• Once Again (Matt Redman)
• The Wonderful Cross (Tomlin arr. of hymn)
• Bless That Wonderful Name (Old Gospel Spiritual I used to sing growing up in a Foursquare Church… I have no idea who wrote it; I can’t even find it on CCLI)
• Mission Focus: Testimony of “Serve Day”
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• Always (United; great song that not enough people know about.  We started doing this song at Youth Group and it has really crossed over well for our people on Sunday.  Click the link to hear it on youtube)
• Message: “Peace in the Valley” – Psalm 23 (Steve Tompert)
• Always (ended with the whole song; kind of a reprise)

For more Weekend Reviews, you can check out Fred McKinnon’s blog

If you don’t have this book, I’d really recommend picking it up. It’s a great starting point. It’s a great foundational tool, a great place to start with someone you’re mentoring or a group of people you want to teach leadership too.

For me, it seems that if I can master the few simple little things in this book, I’ll be much better off. I don’t know about you, but I know for me, the more I read about leadership, the more inept I feel as a leader. Of course I still read leadership books, and learn a lot from them, but this book gives me the hope that I can actually master a few aspects of leadership.

Back to the closing chapter. The thing about leaving a legacy is it’s a contrast between the now and not yet. If we want to leave a legacy, we can’t wait until then to do it. We can’t wait until the future and then just expect a legacy will appear. Legacy will be left by what we do today. Today, the choices we make and the actions we take will either enhance or degrade the legacy we hope to leave. Today is the day to be a leader, we can’t wait until tomorrow.

John Shares a couple of thoughts:

• Lead with a Long View – We have to lead today with tomorrow as well as today in mind.
• Create a Leadership Culture – We have to make developing leaders a part of our culture.
• Pay the price today to assure success tomorrow – There is no success without sacrifice.
• Value Team leadership above individual leadership

He concludes with a thought that many of us have heard and espouse, it’s the idea that we have to pass it on. Andy Stanley and the guys from North Point call it “Replacing Yourself.” We aren’t going to be around forever. If we want to have an impact that lasts beyond us, we have to pass the leadership on to those we are leading. We have to have a vision of the future, train people to lead for it, and let them do it.

If we all did this “little” thing from this “little” book our organizations will be in substantially different places in the future than if we just let things happen. I’d encourage you to go pick this book up if you don’t already have it and give it a read, then read it again. Then lead for a while, and come back and read it again. It’s a great book to use to gauge where you are in your leadership journey.

It’s a big topic (Just like the acoustic guitar) and there’s no way we can cover all of the essentials in these two episodes, but we talk about some really important stuff and John offers some really valuable insight from his experience using it at “The Pearl.”

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

ohn is an Associate pastor at Pearl Church, in the Pearl District in Downtown Portland, OR.

John’s original background is as a church musician – he’s led worship for a number of churches and currently works for Pearl Church in downtown Portland. Along the way, he’s played at coffee shops, pubs, churches, and amphitheaters; making music and practicing production. John spent 3 years running a recording studio on the side, producing and mixing records for clients.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

Other Links:

• www.pearlchurch.com
• www.johnrossmusic.com

Here was our set:

• Rest In Your Peace (An original of mine)
• Center (Charlie Hall)
• Prayer
• Hungry
• Communion
• Jesus Paid it All
• Sermon
• Breathe

Rest in your peace (since I wrote it) is naturally a piano drive song, on Center I started with synth, the acoustic came in and carries the verses, then I really drove the chorus, play 5ths in an eighth note pattern. Hungry is also another naturally piano driven song, and the hook on Jesus Paid it all is a really easy hook to pull off on Piano.

I think it’s actually a really good style to work harder on for this group. I also think it’s good to set a style that you want the band to fit into. I can’t imagine that all the people in our congregation like the same style of music, and that they want to listen to it all the time, so why should we try to have the same style every weekend?

For more weekend Reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

Have you ever had that happen?  Where you are frantically trying to get caught up, but in the process other things fall behind?  I hate that.  I hate not being organized and in control; it drives me crazy!  So last week was a great reminder that I’m not always going to be in control AND IT’S OKAY!

I can barely remember what I did two Sundays ago; it was a miracle that I made it through the morning.  Luckily, I had one of my guitarists do most of the leading and singing.  It was her first time stepping up like this and she did great.  And next week I’ll be gone at a Men’s Retreat and am having my number two do the whole service.  Her and I have been planning this service for a while now and I’m excited to hear how it goes.

In the meantime, here’s what we did on Sunday:

• He is Exalted (classic Twila Paris)
• You’re Worthy of My Praise (David Ruis)
• Lord Most High (Can’t remember who wrote it; it’s an older Vineyard tune in 6/8; our people LOVE this song!)
• God of Wonders (another classic)
• Majesty (Done just like the Passion cover off the CD, “How Great is Our God”)
• Mission Focus: Bob DeViney testimony (a guy from our church has been serving in Baja Mexico for 3 months!)
• Pastoral Prayer / Offering
• Instrumental w/Scripture (Mark 11:22-26)
• Message: “Ya Gotta Have Faith” (Hebrews 11:1-6)
• I Exalt Thee(oldie goldie)

We did a lot of classic songs this week; some of them were older… some of them were REALLY older!  In all, it was a great week and I sure felt a whole lot better health wise then the week before.  If you want to see what other worship leaders are doing with music, go over to Fred McKinnon’s blog and check out more Sunday Setlists.  God bless!

Kevin

It’s a big topic (Just like the acoustic guitar) and there’s no way we can cover all of the essentials in these two episodes, but we talk about some really important stuff and John offers some really valuable insight from his experience using it at “The Pearl.”

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

ohn is an Associate pastor at Pearl Church, in the Pearl District in Downtown Portland, OR.

John’s original background is as a church musician – he’s led worship for a number of churches and currently works for Pearl Church in downtown Portland. Along the way, he’s played at coffee shops, pubs, churches, and amphitheaters; making music and practicing production. John spent 3 years running a recording studio on the side, producing and mixing records for clients.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

Other Links:

• www.pearlchurch.com
• www.johnrossmusic.com

It was a hard weekend for that reason as well as simply trying to get the band together. Luckily, our Senior Pastor hasn’t been preaching these last couple of weeks because we’re doing the “Life, Money, Hope.” series from Lifechurch.tv and Dave Ramsey. (By the way, if you haven’t heard about it, or checked it out, you should definitely check it out – go to www.lifechurch.tv and search for Life, Money, Hope.)

I was also able to get an Electric guitarist from Kevin’s Church, which was also great. Our drummer was sick as well, so it could have been a really rough weekend, but it turned out pretty good. In light of my vocal problems and the other possibilities for disaster, it could have been a nightmare, but it went quite well.

Here was our Set:

• I Will Boast
• Welcome
• Jesus Lead On
• All We Need (Charlie Hall)
• Give it all Away
• Message
• Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone)

The closing song fit perfectly. In the Message Dave talks about the bondage of Debt and actually uses chains as an illustration, so to close with “My chains are gone, I’ve been set Free.” was perfect.

All things considered, it was a pretty good weekend. I hope to not have a weekend like this again, but even if we do, I know we can get through it.

For more weekend Reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

Well anyway, it wasn’t as bad as I thought, I’m sure, it just makes me wish that every weekend could be as well thought out, planned out, prepared for and rehearsed as Easter weekend. Maybe it can.

We’re really hurting for electric guitarists right now, so I tried someone on electric this week who has never played electric and he didn’t do too bad. He’s got one of the best set of ears of all the musicians I work with, so he can hear all the little intricacies of the electric part, so I think he’s really going to be great. For his first time, he did pretty well.

Here was our set:

• Let God Arise
• O Praise Him
• Welcome & Announcements
• A Greater Song
• Holy, Holy, Holy (SCC Arr.)
• Message set up
• Life, Money, Hope. Video
• I will offer up My Life.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

We dig a little deeper this week as we talk about the “dynamics” of playing with a band. John gives us some very practical and extremely helpful advice for what acoustic guitarists can do when they’re playing with a band, and also gives worship leaders some tips on how to ask your guitarists to do certain things.

We still might not know what we’re talking about, but we’re learning!!!

John is an Associate pastor at Pearl Church, in the Pearl District in Downtown Portland, OR.

John’s original background is as a church musician – he’s led worship for a number of churches and currently works for Pearl Church in downtown Portland. Along the way, he’s played at coffee shops, pubs, churches, and amphitheaters; making music and practicing production. John spent 3 years running a recording studio on the side, producing and mixing records for clients.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

Other Links:

• www.pearlchurch.com
• www.johnrossmusic.com

I’ve been at Laurelwood for about three years now, and I honestly feel like this was the best service we’ve ever had.  In addition to having a TON of people on Sunday (we had 450; whereas we usually average 325), the music was amazing.  I had so many people comment on the music; even older people who normally don’t like louder contemporary stuff were saying how much they enjoyed the service.  That made me feel great!

Now my only problem is I’m exhausted!!  I feel like I need to have an amazing service next Sunday, but I don’t know how to pull that off!  It got me thinking about all the time and work that goes into putting together an Easter or Christmas program.  What if we put that kind of work into making every service amazing and excellent?  Then I realized that I probably would never see my family and be exhausted all the time; so I quickly dismissed that notion

Okay, here’s what we did with our Easter service:

• All Because of Jesus (Steve Fee: straight off the his CD “We Shine”)
• My Redeemer Lives (love the classic Hillsong!)
• Christ The Lord is Risen (great Easter hymn)
• Christ Arose (another great Easter hymn with a cool arrangement I worked out)
• In Christ Alone (Getty/Townsend; we had a great sax solo during the turns; beautiful!)
• Body Life / Prayer for offering
• Still Amazed (special song during offering that a friend of mine wrote)
• Easter Message: “God’s Promises for You” – Hebrews 10
• I Will Rise (Beautiful new Chris Tomlin tune off of “Hello Love”; did it just like the recording complete with violin… except I had an alto sing it since it’s so high!)
• Mystery (Cool Charlie Hall tune we did last week; very cool build on the bridge)
• Mighty to Save (I think every church in the world did this song on Easter!)
• Shout Unto God (we did this as a “new ending” for Mighty to Save.  It’s done by Hillsong United and it’s really powerful.  I don’t know if people were expecting an ending like that, but I think it worked)

In addition to doing some great new music that really rocked, we had a lot of instrumentation.  Normally we do a pretty basic band with piano, bass, drums, and either electric or acoustic guitar.  But on Sunday we had all that plus auxilary percusion, violin, saxaphone, trumpet, and some great singers on alto and tenor.  It sounded REALLY good.  I was very happy with how it all turned out

I hope your Easter was equally wonderful.  To check out what other churches did with their Easter service, go on over to Fred McKinnon’s blog.  Have a great “week after Easter”!

We had it all going this weekend, and we got er done. Full worship band, choir, videos, lights, continuity from beginning to end, it was great. It’s got me thinking about things we can do year round that will help us come closer to achieving this caliber of service more often.

Here was what we did:

• “Worthy to be Praised” – soulful choir number by Bryon J. Smith
• Mighty to Save
• Alive, Forever. Amen!”
• “Our Hope” video from worshiphousemedia.com
• Bob’s story of hope (Our Senior pastor’s testimony)
• God of Wonders
• Welcome
• Town Hall for Hope (Promo video we used to promo the “Life, Money, Hope.” Series we’re starting next week.)
• Dismiss kids & Fellowship
• Sermon Part 2
• Video on Sin (About a Police officer in our church)
• Resuce
• All Because of Jesus
• Sermon Part Three
• Video about the same police officer and his wife adopting their son.
• Sermon part four
• Prayer
• Video about woman in our church who discovered our church was a safe place to ask questions
• “Starting Over” Robbie Seay Band.

If I had it to do over, I’d probably cut “Mighty to save” and find another upbeat, resurrection song to put in its place. “Alive Forever Amen” worked great, but “Mighty to save” seemed like kind of a downer after our opener. We did a good transition though, on the final beat of “Mighty to Save” we started the guitar intro of “Alive Forever Amen” and it worked really well.

We also did pretty much the same kind of a transition between “Rescue” and “All Because of Jesus.” I ended the song on keys and started “All Because Of Jesus” with a “loopy” patch on the Motif XS8. So, I faded out of the synth patch from “Rescue” after I started “All Because of Jesus.”

We did a cool Arr. of “God of Wonders” that the band Kevin was in – forgivenmuch – did. It’s a pretty cool, and yet simple arr. of the song, I’ll check into putting it up on here.

“Starting Over” went really well too, but doing it at the end of the service was a challenge because our vocalists voice had gotten cold, and the song requires a fair amount of vocal stamina.

For more reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.